Our welfare system needs to change. First of all every person that receives welfare or any money from the government should be drug tested. Im not talking about weed im talking about major drugs such as meth, cocaine and other hard drugs. Why should people like me (tax payers) pay the government my hard earned money so some crack mom can afford her drugs and rent. The reason im so mad over this is because my aunt has 3 kids. She gave up custody of them and now they live with there grandma. She gets welfare every month for her kids even though she doesn't have them or see them. Now we just found out she is pregnant with another baby and is about to get more money. Honestly i think that once you give up your kids, you shouldn't be aloud to have more kids. I know it is there right whether or not they want more kids or if they turned there life around, but at least stop giving them our hard earned money. She already plans on giving the baby away because she can't afford to take care of her. Currently she doesn't have a job and lives with her mom free of rent and expenses. Not only that she also got some type of settlement on her taxes of $12,000 to help take care of her kids and try to get her life back on track. So far she gave her mom $500 for letting her live there. and she gave the kids $500 each. Why doesnt the grandparents who are taking care of those 3 kids get the $12,000 settlement for adopting these kids not the crack mom who just wants to do drugs and not get a job. Shes only 30 and is in good health, at least get a job at mcdonalds or walmart. It just frustrates me to know that my tax money is going to people that aren't even trying to better themselves. If they would just drug test her than she would stop receiving all this money. People in our society now and days don't have any drive to better themselves. People just want to live off the government and stay home receive there check every month. What ever happened to people working hard starting at the bottom and working there way up to being something better for themselves, and for there family? Our society is so lazy.....

Our welfare system? It certainly isn't something I am in favor of existing.

You pay the government? I disagree that such is the case. People aren't consumers of government goods and services like they are of retailers. The government just takes by aggression the funds whether you want what they say they'll provide or not while with the retailer there is a voluntary exchange.

In regards to lazy societies, in my opinion the government has been embedding some very bad incentives in society. First of all, for the government to do something it needs funds, which will tend to come by taxes and they discourage production. Also, the welfare spending and such itself also discourages production. On top of that, there are all kinds of other interventions, such as minimum wages, non-wage compensation mandates, occupational licensing and so forth, which effectively makes it illegal or at the very least far more risky to hire people of sufficiently marginal labor productivity. For those at the very bottom, the interventions raise their labor costs above what they tend to contribute with their productivity.

It also encourages spending and discourages saving.

I suspect that the longer such happens, it basically increasingly locks such unemployment, underemployment and exiting of the labor force in because businesses would in my mind increasingly turn towards greater productivity from already productive employees perhaps, add more technology by itself instead of new labor or improving existing labor and/or turn to foreign labor. To me such decisions would seem economically difficult to undo.

The best hope, in my opinion, is for the state to remove such and other interventions. But perhaps it is important to the government for there to be people dependent on it or for there to be people who believe they suffer at the hands of businesses.

TheMichaelOnline : Really good points, i tend to stay out of politics or anything that has to do with our government. I need to start informing myself better and to pay attention to whats going on with our government. Its just so frustrating sometimes and depressing i don't want to listen to it.

well, the system is flawed. Any short investigation into the system will show that. And there is no fool-proof way around that. You can test and enforce all you want but doing that may not actually reduce the overall cost of providing welfare. Sure, the dishonest people are out but the cost to verify all those things goes up. The benefits would be negated by the increased cost. I'm not saying it's not worth doing.... I would rather spend extra to verify that the people who need money are getting it. I'm simply pointing out that the cost difference may not be too different.


I think the real problem with welfare systems are the people themselves. There are plenty of people who access welfare/unemployment because they lost their jobs or can't make ends meet doing what they do. The system works for those people and because of those people I can't justify getting rid of it. However there will always be people who cheat the system in some way or another to get absolutely every penny out of it so they don't have to work as hard. And in some ways I don't blame them. You see millionaires (or billionaires) working out of enormous offices pushing paper around and calling it work while people who actually produce goods and services get paid pennies in comparison. And then those same rich people donate 10% of what they earned to charity and call it even. It's a tough system to be on the bottom of that's for sure.

geeogree : I second your statement completely. There are some people that cheat the system, but it is not everyone, and it will cost way more to higher more workers to check on people to make sure they are not cheats.

You know what does work? Reporting people that you know are cheating the system. If they get wind that someone is lying, they do have the ability to go after them. So if what your aunt is doing bothers you, turn her in.

Elara : ya i should turn her in. Cuz it really makes me upset but at the same timeis it wrong of me to do that to my family. I guess some part of me will feel bad but idk the best thing would be to turn her in so people that do deserve it can ge it

numba1packfan : Honestly, if a family member is committing a crime I really don't think you should feel bad for turning them in, because they are hurting the family. If she is cheating the system, doing drugs, and not raising her own children then she deserves to be turned in.