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.
The point is that the civilized state treats, at the very least, the continued incarnated existence of its citizens, and if feasible as a matter of public policy their wellbeing, as
intrinsically valuable, rather than valuable out of some sort of utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. It should be accepted as a general principle that 'subsidizing [its citizens'] existence' is the basic goal of most government policy relative to the area over which that government exerts its authority, the questions then becoming how this ought to be done and in what ways said existence ought to be subsidized (e.g. in a positive sense through welfare,
which isn't inherently more or less valuable based upon the personal characteristics of the recipient in this analysis, versus in a negative sense through merely insuring that fellow-citizens won't randomly stab them in their sleep or at least that their next of kin can have legal recourse if this happens).
