What is society's worst problem right now? Lazy people on welfare?

[jsamuel]

Some people talk about non-stop the lazy people on SS and how they are taking our tax dollars so they can sit around all day and get free housing, food, and other donated goods. Mind you that these people do admit to there being legitimate reasons why some of these people need the help, but most are faking, lazy, and indifferent.

These are RW talking points, but they are reflected by average americans. You don't need to be a neo-con to believe this stuff.

What I find interesting is that the people who are the most upset about this are those who make very little themselves and work for a living. There is probably an element of jealousy in the concern for spending their tax dollars on these people. They work all day and spend money on people who don't. A basic concept that they need to believe in to continue this thought process is that if 3/20 students cheat on a test, then we just should either punish the whole class or just not even have school at all. They have no problem with this concept and we need to accept that they don't find this concept wrong.

One small solution could be to pay people more so that they will see a vast difference between themselves and those who are getting money through these govt programs. For example, it seems that many people who do social work get paid dismally low wages. This propagates the problem as the people who interact with the people the most are living "just as well" while working 40 hours a week. They then see the 3 people who are "cheating" and the anger and jealousy swells.

Another interesting thing about these people is the unwillingness to blame companies that cheat their workers and then their taxes go to pay for the people the companies left out to dry. They say that companies can't help going bankrupt and that's business.

Anyway I was trying to think of a way to get through to these people who have a degree of correctness, but who don't think about the problems that are facing us. They probably don't like news much either (even Fox, as they just don't care what is going on around them in the world). So, I came up with this question:

What do you think society's worst problem is right now? Do you really think it is some people who get SS? Is that the worst thing that is happening in this country?

[indepat]

1. The society's worst problem is a regime whose policies and actions

are wholly detrimental to society as a whole.

[FloridaPat]

2. 1% of the GDP goes to welfare people. All that money goes back into

the economy to support local stores for food, clothing, medicine, etc. Compare that to the fiasco in Iraq, Afghanistan etc etc etc. All that Hallibuton money stays overseas since they are not an "American" corporation. A lot of their money goes to the politicans.

If I had a choice of which group I would go after, it wouldn't be the locals.

[Erika]

3. Welfare reform signed by Clinton stopped the abuse

Many states have a five year LIFETIME cap on aid to recipients who are able bodied. Other states have a two year max.

Lazy people on welfare is just a GOP myth to make workers believe they are being used by the "lower class". The GOP wants to avoid pointing of fingers at the real problems "the corporate elite and big business".

[jsamuel]

5. I understand, but they don't... and won't... We need to find another way

of getting through to these people.

:shrug:
:(

[newswolf56]

14. Sorry but there was no "abuse" to begin with -- not by the poor.

The real abusers were the welfare bureaucrats, who from 1970 through 1990 increased welfare administrative expenses by 5,390 percent (NOT a typo) even as they cut by two-thirds the actual value of stipends and services to the poor. The real welfare fraud was how those vicious bureaucrats (in cooperation with mass media) then -- to avoid getting blamed for the 5,390 percent nest-feathering thievery -- created the Big Lie that runaway welfare costs were the result of "hopelessly lazy" welfare recipients demanding ever greater benefits.

It was, in fact, our first glimpse of the New Order proclaimed by the Reaganoids: the Democratic Party as a Republican Fifth Column, and the chronically poor as the new scapegoats. The betrayal of the poor by Clinton and the Democratic Party was the greatest constituency-betrayal in American history -- and I know for a fact that since that time (and precisely because of those betrayals), there are an untold number formerly "lifelong" Democrats who will never vote Democratic again: "might as well vote Republican -- them Republicans come right out and admit how bad they gonna fuck us -- but at least they let us keep our guns": the real reason the GOP took Congress in '94, the real reason Bush is president today.

Note also in this context Clinton's pandering to white upper-middle-class women: the one group most likely to need (because of divorce) the temporary welfare now allowed by law. The need of bourgeois females is the ONLY reason ANY welfare AT ALL was left in place. As to the real chronic poor whether black or white (but especially the former) -- the policy of BOTH parties is extermination by neglect.

The atrocity of the aftermath of Katrina is merely the most obvious result.

Here by Paul Krugman is the ultimate truth about welfare in America -- the savage racism behind the infinitely damning fact that (of all the planet's industrialized nations) the U.S. is the ONLY nation since the Third Reich to adopt genocide-by-neglect as official policy:

http://www.pkarchive.org/column/091905.html

America's poor have been robbed not once but thrice: by the maliciously cunning welfare bureaucrats who, from 1970 through 1990, perpetrated the 5,390 percent administrative cost hike -- the fraud that perverted New Deal humanitarianism into the class-war selfishness of a jobs program for the bourgeois college elite; by Clinton and the Democratic Party in the guise of welfare "reform"; and by the obscenely greedy American people themselves who -- unlike the citizens of any other industrial civilization on the planet -- are so hateful they maliciously withhold stipends and services everywhere else willingly given.

This is the real "abuse" that should be decried and condemned on this site -- the methodical victimization of the powerless by the powerful -- NOT the absurd Reagan/Clinton/Bush/Goebbels Big Lie version in which the American ubermenschen is somehow victimized by a black, poor and utterly disenfranchised untermenschen -- an untermenschen already condemned to death just as surely as if it had been shipped in stinking railcars through the dread gates of Dachau. This is the real abuse we should be denouncing -- and the fact that we are not is our own damnation.



Edit: angry typo.

[PowerToThePeople]

4. Greed, self-absorption. Both very "non-society" n/t

[terip64]

6. Hate is the biggest problem

and this administration has validated it for all the skin heads

[TheFarseer]

7. they never complain about people that sit on their dead ass

and collect stock dividends for a living. There are plenty of people that do basicaly nothing (unless you count going shopping and on vaccation) and live like kings too. I'd rather be mad at them than people who do nothing and live in poverty. How can you be jealous of people on welfare? Most of them have bleak futures it looks like to me.

[jsamuel]

9. i know, it boggles the mind, but unfortunately this is a large number of

people who think that way. We can't dismiss them out of hand. We need to figure out a way of confronting them and trying to show them how upside-down they are thinking without patronizing them.

[leesa]

8. Economically, it's rich people getting corporate welfare

[ismnotwasm]

10. Illegal president

Illegal,costly war. Compliant press that apparently thinks "entertaining" is more valuable than actually reporting news. Corporate welfare. And when they defend that by saying those corporations provide jobs, ask about wages, benefits, layoffs and retirement. Part time or full time employee's? Agency workers? I don't think there is any one thing right now, it's a plethora of bullshit policies put forth by insane people in power.

I must admit I spent some time on welfare. With small two children. No child support. Living in a housing project. I've come a long, long way since then through very, very hard work. I don't believe that equates with "lazy." I also can tell you that I am NOT the exception.

The only human being I would wish my experience on right now is bush himself and a few of his cronies. I wouldn't wish it on any of the younger children of them, because poverty hurts. It hurts a lot.

[Cats Against Frist]

11. Consumerism. Period.

And not just the consumption of usable goods -- the consumption of narrative, of media, of bodies, of other humans, of self-help, of addictions, of national discourse.

***and my I edit to add: the poor are largely as responsible. We're all responsible -- the poor are not to be deified, nor excused.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

12. According To Rick Santorum It's Man On Dog Love

eom

[Ksec]

13. White collar crime costs WAY more

I read that Enron and what it cost the US taxpayer, cost more than all other crime committed (in a year) . Thats burglary rape, murder,assault,etc. cost us "less" than that one corporate crime committed by Bush's best family friend, Ken Lay and his cohorts.

The Reicht wing doesnt talk about this. Its easier to blame the victims and the poor people that are disabled.

[Redleg]

15. This is just another example of class warfare by the Rethugs.

They want to get the 8 dollar an hour Walmart worker all stirred up about having to pay good tax dollars to support some welfare queen. This takes the worker's attention away from the fact that Walmart is paying them next to nothing. Hell, companies do have choices- look at Costco and The Container Store. They pay their employees substantially more than the industry average and are both successful retail operations.

[jsamuel]

16. this is a battle we should be winning

it is worth fighting for