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From: mahoney@bartok.DEC
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Welfare
Message-ID: <1724@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Mon, 17-Mar-86 14:56:27 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1724
Posted: Mon Mar 17 14:56:27 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Mar-86 20:16:15 EST
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Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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     I don't feel Welfare should be done away but it needs to be totally
overhauled.  In its present state I do feel it captures many (most) people
and keeps them their for good. I have a few suggestions on how welfare could 
work.  I do not know how reasonable they are but they sound good to me. I 
am interested in other people's ideas on this.  I do not really want to 
hear oh Welfare is good welfare is bad.  Let us go on the assumptoin that 
welfare is here to stay.  The second premise is that the current system
must and will change as it is no good.

     1) Place the whole of welfare under one organization.
          Right now different programs are handeled by seperate organizations
	  and departments.  This causes redundency and an easy way to work 
	  around the system to abuse.

     2) When someone enters Welfare they immediately get put into job training.
        The person will have a number of choices.  If they do not have a high 
        school eduction the first course of action will be to get them one. 
	When they are trained for the job then there will be job placement.
	Now people obviously won't be able to get great jobs when they start
	so the government will help to compensate.  They gradually lose the 
	compensation as they move up the salary level.  Say they lose one dollar
        for every three dollars they make over a certain level or something
	like that.  

    3) Now if a woman/or man lives alone and has children the standards will 
       be a little different.  If she has children under 6 then she/he can stay
       home with them.  Once all the kids are of school age then she also goes
       into job training.  Appropriate day care can be setup for when the 
       children get out of school to be paid by the state.

    4) Instead of the huge subsidized housing that we know have.  I agree with
       Reagan setup a voucher program.  The government could give tax breaks 
       and so forth to landlords who rent at a cheaper rate also.  The reason
       for this is that I feel people get locked into these low-income housing
       where that is the only place they can go.  Once they have a job with the
       voucher they can tell the landlord to either fix up the place or they
       will go somewhere else.  This will give incentive for the landlords to
       start taking care of the apartment buildings.  Only one voucher can be
       used per apartment.  If people live together they will be treated as 
       though they are married. You will get more money in a voucher though
       for two people but one of them has to join job trianing.
      
    5) The government should also give tax breaks and so forth for companies
       that they go into depressed areas.  Maybe the government can pay the
       burden of also tearing down the buildings for companies and help the
       start up costs.  For these breaks they must use some precentage
       (a large one at that) of the people who live in the area.  Again this
       would work hand in hand with the job training program.

    6) To check up on abuses there would be people who would make random
       checks.  They would make surprise visits to see that everything is going
       alright on both ends.  Such as maybe the people need something more or
       maybe a boy friend has moved in.  This is sort of like a parole officer.
       I think there might be a better way of doing this but I can't think of
       it.  This seems a little dictatorial but I don't know a better way.

    7)  Some side notes I would bring back the school lunch subsides to the
        level prior to Reagan's cut.
	Possible keep Food Stamps but make it a little harder to abuse them.
	Such as have stamps for vegetables meat milk and so forth.  How much 
	of each can be determined by the person and maybe a nutritionalist
	working together.
        You also will need to make sure that adequate public transportation
        exists.

   These is my idea for Welfare.  What do people see wrong with it? (outside
   of maybe being a little idealistic.) What would people add to/take away from
   it?

  Brian Mahoney