I don't blame individuals for living off the government (at least not your average Joe with no political power or influence; the rich and savvy businessmen who engineered bank bailouts are a different story) as much as I blame a flawed system. People respond to rational incentives. If you create a series of incentives that enable people to make more money lying around the house than working, to guarantee themselves a steady flow of income by getting knocked up at age 16, to keep their government housing by avoiding a promotion, etc then it doesn't take a fortune teller or advanced psychology degree to predict what's going to happen. Especially when you're dealing with literally generations of people for whom this is a way of life and no one's shown them differently.

We need to ask ourselves what we're trying to accomplish and then design social and government programs in accordance with those goals, not the other way around. Do welfare programs actually help people get off welfare? Do government handouts improve quality of life in the long-term? What kind of incentives are we really creating for people? I'm not saying scrap everything because we don't want people starving in the streets and we especially don't want to punish children for having incompetent parents, but there needs to be changes.

I think part of the problem is that there's a disconnect as to what these programs are trying to accomplish. As a generalization, it seems to me like conservatives think social programs exist for a specific purpose (ie feed people), whereas liberals see all these programs as a form of income redistribution. That's why they get indignant when someone proposes limiting junk food on food stamps, or better yet they want to eliminate food stamps all together and just give people cash. To them it doesn't matter if the programs succeed or not because they've already accomplished what they want them to do: equalize income and move toward a more socialist economy. Who cares if we're subsidizing someone's irresponsible lifestyle or substance addiction as long as everything is more "fair"?

Finally, it would be interesting to conduct a study of the people who were on welfare/unemployment/other government programs temporarily and effectively utilized government aid to get back on track and become successful; ie the people for whom the investment was worth the money. And figure out what they have in common, how they did it, and how we can effectively channel resources to people like this while simultaneously cutting off the flow to the lifetime moochers.

I have a cousin... he's French, but the principle remains... his dad is rich. Rich, rich, rich. As in was the national director for a major luxury brand.

This cousin takes "fun" jobs as an event coordinator. But they are contract positions, so they only last 8 months or so. In between, he goes on unemployment.

His Dad speaks proudly of him for gaming the system.

Really? That's what unemployment is for? So the French workers can pay for the scions of luxury to have fun jobs AND keep a nice apartment, and not have to save up while they're on their contracts?

This man, btw, is the product of the strict, disciplined French upbringing Amy admires so much. As is his pot dealer/grower brother and his 2-kids-out-of-wedlock sister. In fairness to the sister, she lives with the father and has a job. Marriage just isn't hip in France. And while I'm glad she's in a stable relationship... I'm sure Crid will back me up on this, if not I apologize... having a boyfriend isn't the same as being married to your kids' father.

Shannon, my Dad went on unemployment a few months back in the 70s. He used the time to get together with his friends and start an architecture firm. He's retired, but the company still exists, providing 50 or so people with jobs.

His background: He went to a great tech school in the south. Then he went to Vietnam. Then he went to a great architecture school in the Boston area.

So basically, he had gone to very competitive schools and was a vet. He obviously wasn't someone with no drive. He'd met with a temporary setback.

I think we need different tracks for people who are basically career-oriented anyways, and for people who come from a background of welfare. I hate to say it, but I kind of understand the forced boarding schools of the early 20th century. Obviously they were a fiasco, but I understand why they were built.

I found the "help" provided by the unemployment office to be not all that helpful. At least the one in NYC seems designed for people who really have no idea how to go about getting a job. There are workshops on how to create a resume, interview, etc. I know how to do these things. I was gainfully employed for over 10 years at a variety of jobs.

What would have been more useful would have been discounted opportunities for education -- for example, workshops on more advanced software and new skills. Not a full college education, of course, but a chance to develop skills that are more likely to lead to a job.

I'm actually on unemployment right now.

I am in a strange position. I am "over-qualified" for most of the available jobs, but I'm also over-specialized. I'm very good at what I do, but it's all I've done for 10 years. I'm a quick learner and I can do just about any job, but with 20 applicants for every job, they can pick someone who looks as good on paper as I do after my first week on the job.

After submitting well over a thousand applications, I finally got hired, doing part-time work. So, I'm working and getting some money from the gov't. It's embarrassing to me. I've been working since I was 14. I have always paid my own way. I bought my own first car, I paid my own way through school, I have always been able to say I took care of my own bills and debts. Now, I'm dependent on the forced "charity" of my neighbors. That's humiliating.

What's worse is that the same government that I am told I should feel gratitude towards is the one that put the company I worked for out of business, thanks to over-regulation and taxation. I feel no gratitude towards the government for "helping me" anymore than I would want to thank a rapist for driving me to the hospital after he violated me. (I am grateful to the people whose taxes pay for me to continue to have light, heat, and food.)

Government is the source of my misery, not the solution.

The Original Kit: "Now, I'm dependent on the forced "charity" of my neighbors. That's humiliating. "
It is that attitude that will save you.
I've done some volunteer work in my time, and the one thing I've learned is when giving help, attitude is almost as importaint as the help itself. The attitude of the giver and the attitude of the reciever. If you feel, that this help is a given right, that you deserve, then you are already lost and will be on the dole in some form or other permanently. If your attitude is this is extra, and being taken from others, you will be grateful, and do everything possible to get off of it, and then later give back.

@Shannon, re "it seems to me like conservatives think social programs exist for a specific purpose (ie feed people), whereas liberals see all these programs as a form of income redistribution. That's why they get indignant when someone proposes limiting junk food on food stamps, or better yet they want to eliminate food stamps all together and just give people cash."

This also applies, I believe, to most people I know pushing the "just give people cash" line, but certainly applies to me; my motives have pretty much nothing to do with finding income redistribution desirable. (Ask any of the liberals I know personally for their opinions of my antiredistributionist libertarian rant.)

And, of course, even if you're not giving people money, it's still income redistribution because you're giving them goods. The conservative food position you mention is every bit as much income redistribution as the cash one.

Rather, it's because I want less income redistribution. Giving them money, unregulated, redistributes money from taxpayers to the poor. When you invent food stamps instead, you're doing that, _and_ you're also redistributing money from the taxpayers to the bureaucrats who administer the food stamp system. When you invent new restrictions upon the food stamps, you're doing both of those _and_ redistributing even more money to a _new_ set of bureaucrats. The consistent position, here, if you don't like the whole notion of income redistribution, is to proceed as short a distance along this line as you can possibly get away with.

The second point, of course, is that it empowers an entire class of people I don't like on account of my freedom-favoring views. Specifically, the sort of people who end up administering welfare programs (whoever creates them) is the same sort of people who end up in social work, public health, the DMV, the TSA, and other petty regulatory agencies - namely, the state-sponsored busybody class that gets its jollies sticking their noses into other folks' business and ordering them about with the force of the law behind them.

And since the public is unlikely to go any time soon for my plan of fitting all these chaps with shock collars and zapping them any time they so much as think of infringing on someone's liberties, the very least I can do is oppose every plan that creates an entire new group of professional prodnoses. No matter how nominally virtuous it may seem to its proponents.

Thanks for the book recommendation, Amy.
I am so fed up with paying into a system that rewards stupidity. I worked my way through college, worked two jobs upon graduation in order to pay off student loans, drove a 1983 Toyota, and saved what I could to buy a home. We had children when we could afford them. We had two, because we knew we couldn't financially support three. And our reward for this? We get to pay even MORE taxes so little miss 15 and pregnant trailer park trash can sit on her ass and get WIC, welfare, and Medicaid.
Now, I am all for helping those who genuinely need help. I support programs like the Salvation Army where people are given assistance, but must work for said assistance and adhere to rules regarding drug use, etc. Why aren't we asking those on welfare to work? Chain gangs have been ruled legal. I'm certainly not advocating chaining up welfare recipients to clean up highways, but the reasoning behind chain gangs is that if those inmates are sitting in prison on the tax payers' dimes, they should have to do work to benefit the public. Why the hell don't we require this of able-bodied people on welfare?!

Heh. I could've written T.O. Kit's response as well. Been there, done that. I recently got a job, but the owner's wife starting gaslighting me, so I resigned. I don't put up with that shit from anyone anymore! With all the experience and skills I have, I shouldn't be at the mercy of people like that, so I made sure I won't be. But it's damn hard, still, to find a job it today's market. I will be starting another job, hopefully on the 15th, but until then, I'm living on what's left of my tax return. I should be okay. But yeah, it sucks. Big time.

Flynne, that's how I wound up leaving my last full-time job.
I didn't bow to the pressure, so I had to go. The best example was when I was sent home because I had a fever and came into work anyway. During the 90-minute meeting they put me through before giving me my walking papers, they used that as "evidence" that I a) didn't care about fellow employees because I came to work sick and b) was unreliable because I took a day off during my probationary period. I sat staring slack-jawed at them for that one.
Also, why put me through an hour and a half riot act before firing me? Who does that?

I'll give you a call tonight if I can; what called it to my attention was when she had taken 3 orders that had been credit card orders, that I had paper-clipped the summary of that day's settlements to, and separated them, and put one of them in front of me and told me that I did it wrong, that I had stapled the summary to the one order, when I know I hadn't (and there were NO holes in either of the papers where a staple would have been), and I said so, and she was all "so where are the other 2?" and I went looking for them, and even went into the bookkeeping program they used, to find the amounts of the other 2 orders, and it turned out the other 2 were on someone else's desk, where she had left them, according to that person, who gave them to me when she left. And then I started seeing some of the other things she had done as being questionable, but that I had overlooked because I just thought she was a little quirky. But when she wrote me up for "not executing my job responsibilites as told" and accusing my kids of "calling every 5 miuntes" when they hadn't even called (she also wanted me to "turn off [my] cell phone" and accused me of going on a website that I hadn't been on at all but she HAD), I figured out what was going on. Gave my resignation the next day. I'm not putting up with that kind of bullshit anymore.

OMG, Kit, she did that to me too, sent me home and then docked my pay! Admittedly, I was upset about something going on with one of my kids, but all I needed was a few minutes alone, which I took when I went to lunch. When I came back, someeone else was sitting at my desk doing my job! And then she wrote me up, see above! Some people, I swear, are not happy unless they are deliberately making others miserable and making themselves out to be golden. I figured they were grooming that person for the job I was doing anyway, let 'em. Make the other person miserable, not me!

I think part of this problem comes from sources we don't think about. Such as all the freebies already available!

Example: Think of all the spendthrifts (the rich kind, not the poor kind) who buy stuff they don't need, get tired of it, and sell it cheaply - or Give It Away - on Craigslist. You can't blame savvy shoppers for taking advantage of that. Trouble is, thousands of LAZY people, especially, get too used to all those cheap goodies and start to expect things like free rent as well.

Just my guess.

If we want to get people off of welfare, we need two things:

Mandatory job training enrollment into high demand jobs for anyone on the dole without finding work for 4 months. (No theater majors, just engineer, plumber, etc.)

Second, pay a living welfare wage, but have a mandatory percentage decrease regardless of employment status every so often. Say a 5% pay cut every 4 months. And no restarts, if you get off welfare after 2 years, and then go back on it, you get only 70% of what you used to. And when the paycheck gets cut down to 0, you're off welfare forever.

Third, Mandatory birth control for females. Mandatory paternity testing for males that are alleged to be fathers. (If male birth control existed, I'd say that instead) No welfare babies. No coverage for pregnancy care for those who do get knocked up on welfare. And no increase based on children.

Fourth, Mandatory videotaped home inspections and drug tests. Expensive new stuff acquired? OK prove how you got it. Acquired by crime, lose all benefits and removed from welfare rolls forever. Fail a drug test, removed from welfare roll forever.

Fifth, penalizing people for finding work is counterproductive. If a person finds part time work, don't slash the benefits, instead reward this success with additional options for education.

Hey robert, how about freee vacectomies if the guy vollenteers?

Abolish welfare. Charity should be privately supplied and run. Bring back orphanages. At least that way the kids would get three meals a day and an education, not living with their loser mother and her boyfriend du jour.

Yep, I'm a bitch like that. And no, I won't apologize for it.

When you subsidize a behavior, you get more of it. Stop subsidizing stupid.

I have found that women like Flynne make excellent efficient workers, and especially high level executive assistants. When the time comes for me to get one, in the back of my mind I've always wanted a woman fitting Flynne's profile in regards to age, kids, work ethic etc. I do notice they like to pass women off like that due to age, and salary requirements but I say you must pay someone accordingly and not be stingy with wages.

After all people have been stingy with me (when the company is making tons of profits) and I know how that feels like. I mean I do have to support my pets, cant imagine the worry that comes when it's actually kids.

I agree the unemployment office is almost totally worthless. To me, they at least had the honor to admit it - well, they weren't much help for people had skills beyond the most basic. They did have 1 day classes on things like Word that were free if you councilor recommended it for you.

Looking at the people I have personally known on unemployment - People who are used to working and getting rewards significantly more than unemployment. All but one of co-workers was out there working to get another job. The one who didn't - well in all the years we worked in the same department I have no idea what she did (if anything) but for about 2 month period. She didn't really start looking for a job hard till her unemployment was about to run out. This based on her facebook postings.

The real problem is people who are used to getting stuff for free. My ex-SIL lived off the nice things bought with my brother's income. She has been on some sort of gov't assistance since they divorced.

One of the problems, I feel, is that so many jobs pay little (or even not as much as) unemployment.

Another problem is the re-calc problem. If you take contract work that will be used as your income for the next re-calc. One couples struggle detailed on the news showed that they had taken contract work - one for 3 months the other for 2. After so long unemployment is reevaluated. Since they had worked in the time frame that was new value - they had been getting each ~500$, now since they had worked so little they qualified for $0 each...yet if they had not worked at all, it would have been the original amounts.

"I have found that women like Flynne make excellent efficient workers,..."

Flynne has her own .30-'06... {heart}{heart}{heart}

Now, enjoy this lifestyle advice from Jenna Marbles! How to Trick People Into Thinking You're Rich

The new class distinction is between the productive class and the entitlement class. Neither of these breaks along traditional economic-class lines.