I also don't believe in the welfare state, and people should not be allowed to have kids who have no way of taking care of them. Having kids is not a freedom, your rights to be a parent end at that child's right to have a suitable upbringing. Pro birth is not the same thing as pro life (which I actually am, even if it means less births). Additionally, welfare is supposed to support you until you can find work again, not be a permanent crutch. While the majority of welfare users are honest, plenty of both races, aren't. Kick those people off it. Then they can stop being used as the strawman against a program designed to get people working again.
I didn't catch this the first time around.
The welfare reform of the 1990s limited the number of years that you can collect. "Those people" have already been kicked off it. Many of them have almost zero income. Many of them are completely incapable of working.
"$2 a day, living on almost nothing in America" is an interesting book on the topic. As is "This House Protected By Poverty" by Frances K. Ransley.
Also, random thoughts in no particular order
- who decides what a suitable upbringing is?
- what happens to all those children whose parents are unsuitable? How is foster care helping anyway? Is there any hope for children with fetal alcohol syndrome, or personality / brain issues from having been neglected? If there is hope, what is it? What does it cost? How do we pay for it?
- if we are forcing families off welfare (which, as I pointed out above, already happened in the 1990s) - how exactly do people get jobs without child care? What happens if there is work but it doesn't pay enough for housing, food, and child care?
- Are we willing, as a country, to subsidize mothers and/ or fathers to stay at home with children until school, simply because it's cheaper than having them work?
The whole issue is incredibly complicated, and every book I read and person I talk to convinces me it's even MORE complicated than I originally thought. "Back in the day" and all that (The Frances Ransley book takes place a few decades ago) - kids went hungry, lived in substandard conditions. Is that really what we want?
Approximately 20% of the students in our elementary school are classified as homeless. These aren't families that aren't working. They are working - they are just poor. I think a lot of people who complain about welfare want to complain about the "cheats" (we all know someone who knows someone)... but nobody talks about the people who are just freaking poor.