This thread is white privilege at its worst. TANF needs reform? How? The program is as toothless as its ever been, having largely failed in its role to protect against economic disasters like the one in 2008. I could see if we were talking about an increase in benefits, but of course we are talking about a scaling back of the program.
This is what frustrates me the most. People who have never even lived at the cusp of poverty (like Romney) are demagoguing this issue, trying to push forward a negative stereotype when the reality of programs like TANF is very different. Romney was given everything by his father, but he's going to judge others who are less fortunate than him?
No actually he 'worked for a living'. A concept many on welfare should try. Are you suggesting that anyone who is not on welfare (and therefore pays the taxes for it) should have no say in how the system is run.
If the jobs are available -- and if the welfare recipients are the sorts of people that one wants on the job. In a really-nasty recession such might be almost as pointless as telling a destitute person to make wise investments in capital markets.
Then what is the point of our subsidising their existence on welfare.
Have you ever heard of the words "useless eaters"?
I assume your talking about Nazism. You misunderstand me. I support helping the deserving poor and disadvantaged through charity. I myself have given money to charity regularly. I don't support on the other hand this idea of the government redistributing the hard earned wealth of the tax payer to the poor, usually the undeserving. The state should get out of this vicious cycle of subsidies to the poor and unemployed, which provide them with no incentive to work, earn and save. Not only that, it would ease the tax burden on the hard working backbone of society, the employed.
Nazism, yes. That was in part a reference to the Nazi practice of murdering the handicapped. But it wasn't only Nazism. Communism did it, too. Solzhenitsyn tells us that the Commies of the early Soviet Union frequently gave orders to 'destroy parasites upon the working class', and local Commies interpreted that to mean not only the elimination of the old ruling elite but where such people could not be found they often killed the crippled and mentally-impaired. At the extreme, even beyond the madness of the Soviet Union and the Third Reich was "Democratic Kampuchea", which executed anyone who failed to fit into its insane demand that people be nothing but obedient robots.
Murder is murder whether it is through shooting or starvation. Civility depends upon the recognition of the value of humanity even if people frustrate political, personal, or economic objectives. A system that allows people to die because they lack the means or character to 'contribute' to society violates one of the most basic moral laws that has ever existed.
Charity is not enough. An economic system that ensures that people who do the work are compelled to live at the brink of hunger allows for no charity except for the charitable contributions of people who profiteer off the system. Economic elites in contemporary America are as vile and selfish as those anywhere.
