Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 Tandy Xenix 02/17/86; site gilbbs.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!hplabs!qantel!ptsfa!gilbbs!mc68020 From: mc68020@gilbbs.UUCP (Tom Keller) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Welfare Message-ID: <98@gilbbs.UUCP> Date: Wed, 19-Mar-86 02:11:19 EST Article-I.D.: gilbbs.98 Posted: Wed Mar 19 02:11:19 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 26-Mar-86 18:52:09 EST References: <1724@decwrl.DEC.COM> Organization: Gil's Place, Santa Rosa CA Lines: 148 In article <1724@decwrl.DEC.COM>, mahoney@dec-bartok.UUCP writes: > 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. In theory, not a bad idea. I question the effectiveness of such a solution in terms of efficiency. Large bureaucracies tend not to be very effective. > > 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. What about persons who are not mentally competent enough to acquire such skills? What about those who are severely distuebed emotionally, and cannot cope with other people sufficiently well to deal with the training and work environments? What about those who are physically disabled to the point that such training is not helpful? Nice ideas, but not very thouroughly thought out. > > 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. In areas where housing is in short supply (almost any urban area, or any are with colleges and/or universities, or areas where many new businesses and industries are moving in), landlords get such exhorbitantly high rents that the pittance they might be offered through tax incentives is hardly likely to interest them. Also, many poor persons share housing in order to better make ends meet. It does not follow that because two persons of the opposite gender share a house or apartment, that they are co-habitating. To assume that they are, and treat them as such, violates many rights, privacy among them. > > 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. You mean like the tax incentives that the government gave the steel industry, in order to encourage them to improve their plants? The money from which they used to diversify, while allowing their steel mills to fall apart, and close? Offering incentives to American business is something like a thief loose in a bank vault...their track record in such circumstances stinks. > > 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. > In other words, let's punish people for being poor. After all, they're only poor people, they don't deserve privacy, or to be considered innocent until proven guilty, or protection against search without warrants and probable cause, do they? > 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. Yeah. Just like George Bush and his wife "shopping for a weeks groceries" on food stamps, right? After all, the govenrment knows what foods I need to eat better than I do, that's for sure. > 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 Brian, your ideas deserve merit, in that you obviously took a little time to think about the problem. There are problems with them, but that's alright, they are as good a place as any to start out. One of the problems we have in this country is that the conservative, anti-humanist factions have managed to convince much of the public that the poor, the elderly and the disabled are, to borrow Reagan's infamous phrase "...a faceless mass, waiting for a handout". The facts are that this simply isn't true. It is very easy for the highly intelligent, well educated individuals who tend to inhabit this network to assume that if *THEY* could survive and make it in the system everyone else should be able to as well. Elitism be damned. The fact is that a very large percentage of the population simply does not have the intellectual capability necessary to achieve this sort of success. IQ doesn't mean one whole hell of a lot, but it does have some value as a metric. Check out the average IQ for the U.S. People who are born of poverty and despair, raised in poverty and despair (and malnutrition, which among other things directly affects the adult intellectual capacities of these people), are likely to live in poverty and despair. It is what they have been taught to expect, and what many of them believe they deserve. Those of us who are privileged to have the intelligence, the drive, and the opportunity (and yes, I recognize that the occasional individual rises above all the liabilities, to succeed in spite of the system...that still does not imply that all, or most, or even many, could), seem to be either incapable, or unwilling to recognize these facts. They are, unfortunately, painful, embarassing, unpleasant and discouraging. Until we *STOP* thinking of the poor as a political and economic problem, and start thinking of them as human beings in need of assistance, we will *NEVER* solve the problems! Think on it. (oh, for the record: the current social welfare system stinks. It needs overhauling desparately. We will not develop a successful system until we have dealt with the problem I discuss in the above paragraph) -- ==================================== Disclaimer: I hereby disclaim any and all responsibility for disclaimers. tom keller {ihnp4, dual}!ptsfa!gilbbs!mc68020 (* we may not be big, but we're small! *)