Welfare Reform Extension Act

[dazzleman]

One of the most important rules in life is to do things in the right order.  That means education first, then marriage, then children.

You can usually get away with one screw-up on this, but not two.  People on welfare generally have done things in totally the wrong order - children first, then, if at all, educaton, and then, if at all, marriage.

If I had had a kid while still in high school, and never had been able to finish my education, AND had to raise the kid alone, I'd be in a terrible position.  Back then, I was working for a little above minimum wage.  That where everybody starts out.  With experience and education, you climb above that.  But some people make choices that ensure that they will always remain there.

Raising kids is a 2-person job, both financially and emotionally.  Even a non-working spouse provides financial benefit indirectly by handling issues outside work so that the breadwinning spouse can focus on making money.

The single parent often does not have the psychic energy to climb the career ladder, because the situation at home is so demanding, and they effectively have to do the job of two people.  But if that's what they've chose, whose fault is that?

I don't agree that most jobs are minimum wage or a little above.  I know a lot of people, and I don't know anybody who works at the level job they had as a teenager.  

The problem is much more complex than that, and is really two-fold.  One is social and demographic, the other economic, and they overlap.  On the one hand, there is a political philosophy, loosely called feminism, that effectively encourages people, particularly women, to eschew traditional values, one of the most important of which was to have a husband before you have a child.  This, coupled with perverse incentives from the government to the underclass, has created a boom in single-parent families.

At the same time, women have been encouraged to work outside the home, and a circular problem has been created.  Demographically, the housing market is largely driven by 2-career families, meaning that prices have risen dramatically, relative to a single person's income, in the last 3 decades.  A family living on one average income, and needing to provide its own housing, is worse-off today than 30 years ago because of this.

On the economic front, the loss of global manufacturing supremacy by the US, in the 1970s, something that could not have been avoided, means that today there is more of a premium on education than there was in the past.  Real earnings for unskilled workers have fallen, while real earnings for educated workers has risen sharply.  This has been compounded by the switch from predominantly single income to two-income households, effectively widening the gap between the educated and uneducated, since the uneducated have lost the ability they had previously to narrow the earnings gap by having the wife in the family work.

So in sum, there is a confluence of social and economic factors that has entrenched poverty and deprivation more deeply for those who don't do things in the right order.  We should be telling our kids this, drumming it into their heads, so that they see the consequences of messing up in this area, because this is not something that any of us can fundamentally change.

opebo's proposals, as always, are laughable.  They will only deepen the problem.  The only real solution is to discourage people from getting themselves into a situation in which they have a child with no spouse and no job skills.

[dazzleman]

Flyers you are absolutely correct about the sad state of employment opportunities and the sorry wage levels in the US.  However I take issue with the assumption that people should be expected to get off of welfare.  Built into the capitalist system is a requirement of about 4 or 5% unemployment to prevent upward pressure on wages - this is orchestrated by the Federal Reserve as the main lever for implementing its stated purpose, which is to prevent inflation. 

It is unreasonable to expect people to get off of welfare if they don't want to.  I mean why should we care?  Really it is just the puritan work ethic, which demands that people 'work' for their living - of course the rich never do.  We need to get past the work ethic as the Europeans have before we can ever look at these issues reasonably.

You're smoking crack.  It's people who work who support people on welfare.  Your comment that the rich don't work may be true of your family, but it generally is not.  Your view of the world is seriously skewed and distorted.

[dazzleman]

No, the tax money that supports a welfare system should come primarily from the rich - the owning class.  From profits or return on capital, in other words, rather than 'earned income'.  Of course there are some people who work but are paid a lot, such as yourself.  These people are rare, but can certainly afford to pay a hefty tax.  After all, their work is much easier than that of the lower classes.

Tax revenue does come mainly from "the rich" as you call them.  And you are wrong that highly paid work is easier than low-paying jobs.  In most cases, the reverse is true, though high-paying jobs surely have more status.  Whether they are harder or easier depends on level of training, and personal preference for type of work.  Not having worked at all, that's not something you'd know a lot about.