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From: berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Welfare
Message-ID: <2032@psuvax1.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Mar-86 17:39:20 EST
Article-I.D.: psuvax1.2032
Posted: Wed Mar 19 17:39:20 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Mar-86 23:05:00 EST
References: <1724@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Organization: Pennsylvania State Univ.
Lines: 72

>      I don't feel Welfare should be done away but it needs to be totally
> overhauled.  ..........
> 
>      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.

      This would imply a single federal agency.  The standards should
      perhaps depend on the level of prices of different areas (for the
      same money you are very poor in New York and quite comfortable in
      Albuquerque, as I was told).
> 
>     2) When someone enters Welfare they immediately get put into job training.
>        ..............
> 
>     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.
> 
   What happenned to Reagan's initiative of this kind?   Seems that he 
   is lobbying harder for 'humanitarian help' for some questionably 
   behaving persons in Honduras...

>     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

I would add that the wellfare should always be constructed in such a way
that the 'tax' on earned income (the ratio of income from a job to the
benefits lost) should not exceed 50%.

Piotr Berman