Don't get me started on the absurdity of open-ended welfare. No one should have the state pay for a private home. You should not get more money for kids you have AFTER you go on welfare. That'd drop the unwed birthrate dramatically. You should also have a time limit to get your shit together, after which time you are on your own. Not that any of those will ever happen, there are too many liberals, and far too many voters on the dole. We'll just continue on till we're bankrupt.

We've had a lot of Ike evacuees here in Austin, people who were very poor prior to the storm, and whose apartments, filled with their belongings, were wiped out. They, of course, did not care enough about their own belongings to insure them, which costs less then $50 a YEAR for renters. So they come up here in state-paid busses, stay in paid hotels with paid food and clothing, AND the government pays them for their ruined belongings, and they are HOWLING that their free ride is about up, 2 months later. Apparently they are supposed to be supported for life. I mean, the Katrina people apparently are going to be, so why not all hurricane victims? A better plan would be "you live on the coast, you need to be prepared" but we can't expect responsibility, can we? And they're no different than the idiots on CA living in wildfire zones, and rebuilding when they're burnt out. All with government help, of course.

Heck, my living situation isn't ideal, my kids have to share rooms. Can the government pay me?

I don't get it either. You don't need to saddle yourself with a screeching ankle-biter just to move out. No, you probably won't make much money right out of high school - you might need to share living expenses with a roommate or two. But it sure beats the hell out of being poor for life. Ever notice that, with lifelong poor people? Step Number One always seems to be have a baby you can't afford. (Followed by Step Number Two, rack up debt, and so on.)

I'm not saying I disagree with the idea that welfare should be limited and not enjoyable so that people will want to find a way out of the system, but momof3, I live in Virginia, and my renter's insurance is double what you're saying. I can't imagine that it's cheaper in hurricane country.

I think the post and Amy have a valid point for Austin, too, though. If the Ike victims were living in dormitory-style situations until they could get their lives together, eating dormitory-style PB&Js and green beans, they'd probably have gotten it together sooner. If that were the case, I'd be okay with them living in such a situation for longer than two months.

Well, I'm in Austin. not hurricane coast, but I paid less than $50 a year. Depends on what you own, I suppose. Point being, if you don't value your belongings, why should we?

I insure my whole house-structure and belongings, for $300 a year now. And there are plenty of people who do'nt bother with that either. Boo-hoo, I feel so bad for them.

I look at it that any welfare should be along the lines of -- you have to show up for classes, etc. at a central location(s) every day.

If you have completed all your classes to "graduate" then you still have to show up at the center and work at putting in job apps, or even working in a daycare center taking care of other kids while their parent works.

I have no problem supporting parents and kids until (and even after) they are gainfully employed using a transition system. But someone sitting home and collecting a check just ticks me off.

I agree with Jim. Want your check, you gotta do something for it. Not only classes - there are lots of useful things that need done. Pick up trash, scrub off graffiti, clean the public toilets. Unpleasant but useful work. While mom is off working, the kids are in decent childcare, getting a start on socialization and education.

Those are very good ideas, bradley13 and Jim P. and while they're doing those things, I also think they should have to take a whiz quiz. Lots of other people have to pee in a cup to get/keep a job, and if you're on the public dole, I think even more so you should have to prove you're not using their dime to get high. Of course, YMMV.
o.O

>>Unpleasant but useful work. While mom is off working, the kids are in decent childcare, getting a start on socialization and education.

Bradley13 (and Flynne),
Sounds good - but I don't think the math works?

"Unpleasant but useful work" doesn't normally pay enough for "decent childcare".

Subsidize the latter - and you get justified squeals of complaint from working parents with very young kids scrabbling to pay the childcare market rate AND their mortgages.

Subsidize the latter - and you get justified squeals of complaint from ...

While I agree that it sucks from a fairness standpoint, I'd rather get something out of them. Throw in that they don't get more than they would have gotten for sitting on their asses. It also would encouragement to go get a regular job, not the dole.

Besides, I was also thinking more along the lines of the union hall model used to be. You would show up, sit around and then if they needed day laborers the company would call and say send down x number that can paint walls.

> it sucks from a fairness
> standpoint, I'd rather
> get something out of them

At what price?

> What I don't understand - why do
> single women who have no source
> of income have kids?

This is a big theme with me, and it's been discussed here before (but never with a single catchphrase, so it can't be easily Googled).

Many if not most women feel a profound biological urge to have babies. It's not an urge to raise them well, or to give them comfort, or teach them anything in particular about being alive. It's just an urge to make babies.

(Men's base urges don't even go that far.)

Pinsky once phrased it like this: "Women feel an erotic need to have children." He didn't mean that it's orgasmic, but that wording speaks to the excitement, arousal and obsession that woman can feel about it.

The fact that any particular women doesn't want kids (Amy for example) doesn't mean anything. Most men can grow beards if they don't shave. The fact that some won't even if they lose their razors doesn't mean that beards aren't masculine. (Furthermore, the Amy-types often say they won't bother trying because they're not into it enough to take the responsibility, which is plenty honorable.)

I think women in our culture are permitted and sometimes encouraged to say goofy things to flatter themselves on this point. No matter how obvious it is that a woman's never had an innovative thought or improvisational response in her whole life, she'll be forgiven for describing her family-making as a cosmos-rocking innovation of feeling and reaction. (In my whole life, I've known precisely one (1) woman between ages 20 & 60 who admitted that she wasn't a great mother... And she was hardly a monster.)

I wish women were as self-conscious about this as good men have learned to be about their baby-making impulses. Men will drink beer with each other and let down their guard and say gruesome, heartless things about the women they want to fuck. But they won't really take pride it in, expecting kudos from the culture... They just want the tail. And except for a rude comment at a company Christmas party or something, most good men keep their impulses under control.

This is part of my theory that the last 10,000 years of civilization was about getting masculine nature under control. (Or at least identifying it. After a man's failed to contain these impulses, everybody knows what happened.) For the next 10,000 years, we've got to convince women to face down the demon of their feminine nature.

But in 2008, most women are appalled when you suggest that femininity has a down side. They'll say "But I'm just a product of my socialization...!"

This story reminds me of an example of Mitt Romney's economic brilliance and ability to solve problems. When he was Governor of Mass. they had a huge "homeless" problem. The shelters were full and vouchers for hotel rooms had to be extended to thousands of "homeless". The cost of hotel rooms was enormous.

Romney looked at the problem. He saw that the method of simply extending vouchers to the last people to show up at the shelters on any given day when the shelters became full was completly backwards.

Romeny changed the rules so that those who had stayed in the shelters the most number of nights in a row would be first to be given a hotel room. Often this was families w/ children who really needed the shelter who arrived first at the shelter so as to be assured shelter from the elements. So those truley needy people, often families, who had stayed in the shelter several days or weeks would be the first elegible for the hotel vouchers.

They soon found that the shelters quite filling up. You see, before the rule change a lot of drunks or addicted single transients or party types would know the game and show up late to the shelter, knowing it would be full. They would then get a hotel room every night and party all night long on the governments dime in a hotel room provided by the state.

When the rules changed and those who had been in the shelter the longest got first dibs on the hotel room vouchers then suddenly the "homeless" and party types didn't want to sleep in a lowly shelter for a few weeks to be eligible for a hotel room voucher. They just slept at a family or friends couch or whatever. They found other means to stay off the street because they could. They didn't really need the shelter.

Suddenly demand dropped, the shelters did not fill and the need for hotel room vouchers vanished saving millions of dollars simply by reversing the order of who was eligible for the vouchers. No huge beuracracy needed or cuts to a progam needed. Just Mitt Romney looking at a problem and coming up with a brilliant solution.

Maybe that is why Romney made millions consulting for troubled business and making them more efficient and productive.

Maybe New York needs Romney to help them come up with a workable solution.

I liked Romney a lot. Romney/Palin 2012 would be nice. WOnder how long it's take Dc to pound the common sense out of him?

"Unpleasant but useful work" doesn't normally pay enough for "decent childcare".

So then, why don't they have some of these "welfare mothers" providing childcare on a rotating basis with the other mothers who are going to training, or school, or jobs? There is a way to work this out, people just don't want to apply themselves and think about it! Take a group of these women, from a housing project let's say, and put 1/3 in classes, 1/3 in regular jobs, and 1/3 doing the child care, and you could maybe base their support checks on what they're doing, when they're doing it, and maybe increase or decrease them, based on performance? But again, I would make it mandatory that they take whiz quiz, every coupla weeks or months, because even though they would be doing mostly menial tasks, until they're qualified to do something else, better to do them with less chance of getting injured, no?

The only downside to this is that we'd have to be really careful about who gets childcare duty.

I hate the idea of leeches getting freebies, but I also hate the idea of tossing helpless children into the street for something that isn't their fault and something they can't do anything about. I'm partial to the idea of requiring that welfare mothers have IUDs inserted before being able to collect.

I am homeless because of a fire that ripped through my apt from an adjoining apt. I am in a shelter and no, I cannot shack up with my family members. I paid decent rent before this happened..now a one bed-room apt is over $1000 a month..i can't afford that raising a 9 yr old by myself in NYC..so what gives? I am glad NYC can help me. Put yourself in my shoes selfish ********