HagarTheHorrible
Big 'Ol Pussy
Welfare is an issue which arouses strong feelings - on both sides of the Atlantic - so here is a thread where people can sound off about it as much as they like. My own views inevitably have a UK perspective, but I think that many of the issues may well be applicable on both sides of the pond.
I believe that any decent and relatively wealthy society - which applies to both UK and US - ought to be able to take care of it's own. And it is a fact that there will always be periods of higher unemployment when there are simply not enough jobs to go around, there will always be those too sick or disabled to work, and there will always be those who have to settle temporarily for jobs that simply don't pay enough to support their families. The rest of society, via welfare funded by taxpayers, has a moral duty to support these through difficult times - AS LONG AS THEY ARE PREPARED TO GET OFF THEIR ASSES AND HELP THEMSELVES IF AND WHEN THEY CAN - an important proviso. The alternative would be to leave those who hit hard times homeless and begging on the streets, which would surely be a disgusting spectacle in wealthy nations such as ours. So welfare not only helps those in need, it also helps prevent our nations from looking totally shit.
And yes, as with just about any mechanism ever devised that involves payments of any kind, there will be scammers. And there will be those who seek to abuse the system. But no system is ever likely to be perfect enough to prevent that. The best we can do is crack down on it as much as possible, and prosecute and jail those caught. It is not an excuse for doing away with the system.
There is much disinformation and bullshit about this subject.
Here in the UK, we constantly hear stories about this guy down the pub who lives on the dole but has two new cars and three foreign holidays every year, etc,etc. Most of the time such stories are absolute bollocks or grossly exaggerated. People opposed to welfare do sometimes - shock horror - INVENT such stories to make a case. Meanwhile, the right wing press constantly whips up hatred against the welfare system itself, seeking to convince readers all too willing to believe, that the system is predominantly being used by charlatans to defraud taxpayers. They do this by investigating the worst examples of abuse committed by individuals, plastering them all over the front pages, and linking them to anti-welfare tirades, thereby convincing their readers that these fraudsters are the norm and that this is what every welfare claimant is doing, which is total bullshit.
We now have a large section of the electorate convinced that everyone on welfare is an undeserving scrounger, without themselves ever having had any personal knowledge of the system at all. And the degree of their malice combined with ignorance is quite breathtaking to behold for those of us who have known people in genuine hardship.
And as for who is defrauding taxpayers the most, here in the UK are some very revealing stats - not sure if the situation is mirrored in the US or not. But in the UK some £5 billion is thought to be being lost via the welfare system every year as a result of fraud and error. Two thirds of that is due to errors on the part of those administering a system which has grown ridiculously complex. So only about £1.7 billion is actually being lost to welfare fraud. Set against that is the fact that some £25 billion is being lost due to tax evasion by mostly quite wealthy people. Yet our government pays for ten times as many staff to investigate that £1.7 billion welfare fraud, than it pays to investigate the £25 billions lost through tax evasion.
It is all to do with politics, scapegoating of the poor, and governments being in the pockets of their rich mates, at least in the UK anyway.
I believe that any decent and relatively wealthy society - which applies to both UK and US - ought to be able to take care of it's own. And it is a fact that there will always be periods of higher unemployment when there are simply not enough jobs to go around, there will always be those too sick or disabled to work, and there will always be those who have to settle temporarily for jobs that simply don't pay enough to support their families. The rest of society, via welfare funded by taxpayers, has a moral duty to support these through difficult times - AS LONG AS THEY ARE PREPARED TO GET OFF THEIR ASSES AND HELP THEMSELVES IF AND WHEN THEY CAN - an important proviso. The alternative would be to leave those who hit hard times homeless and begging on the streets, which would surely be a disgusting spectacle in wealthy nations such as ours. So welfare not only helps those in need, it also helps prevent our nations from looking totally shit.
And yes, as with just about any mechanism ever devised that involves payments of any kind, there will be scammers. And there will be those who seek to abuse the system. But no system is ever likely to be perfect enough to prevent that. The best we can do is crack down on it as much as possible, and prosecute and jail those caught. It is not an excuse for doing away with the system.
There is much disinformation and bullshit about this subject.
Here in the UK, we constantly hear stories about this guy down the pub who lives on the dole but has two new cars and three foreign holidays every year, etc,etc. Most of the time such stories are absolute bollocks or grossly exaggerated. People opposed to welfare do sometimes - shock horror - INVENT such stories to make a case. Meanwhile, the right wing press constantly whips up hatred against the welfare system itself, seeking to convince readers all too willing to believe, that the system is predominantly being used by charlatans to defraud taxpayers. They do this by investigating the worst examples of abuse committed by individuals, plastering them all over the front pages, and linking them to anti-welfare tirades, thereby convincing their readers that these fraudsters are the norm and that this is what every welfare claimant is doing, which is total bullshit.
We now have a large section of the electorate convinced that everyone on welfare is an undeserving scrounger, without themselves ever having had any personal knowledge of the system at all. And the degree of their malice combined with ignorance is quite breathtaking to behold for those of us who have known people in genuine hardship.
And as for who is defrauding taxpayers the most, here in the UK are some very revealing stats - not sure if the situation is mirrored in the US or not. But in the UK some £5 billion is thought to be being lost via the welfare system every year as a result of fraud and error. Two thirds of that is due to errors on the part of those administering a system which has grown ridiculously complex. So only about £1.7 billion is actually being lost to welfare fraud. Set against that is the fact that some £25 billion is being lost due to tax evasion by mostly quite wealthy people. Yet our government pays for ten times as many staff to investigate that £1.7 billion welfare fraud, than it pays to investigate the £25 billions lost through tax evasion.
It is all to do with politics, scapegoating of the poor, and governments being in the pockets of their rich mates, at least in the UK anyway.