Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.correct
From: gpriores@oracle.com (gordon prioreschi)
Subject: Re: Welfare vs. Workfare
Organization: Oracle Corp., Belmont CA
	<1992Dec23.032235.29062@Princeton.EDU>
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 21:25:12 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
              at Oracle Corporation.  The opinions expressed are those
              of the user and not necessarily those of Oracle.

In article <1992Dec23.032235.29062@Princeton.EDU> niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent) writes:
>Is this standard libertarian rhetoric about
>how all government bureaucrats are evil parasites, or is this standard
>conservative rhetoric about how all welfare recipients are evil parasites?

parasite, n.: An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in
a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its
host.

Hmm. Probably not evil, though... at least not the recipients...


> Because if it's the latter, it's complete bullshit.  There are not a lot
>of people "making a decent living" on welfare, unless you're comparing
>their living standards to Somalia.

What do you mean by "decent"? Welfare recipients certainly don't get
new cars every three years like much of the rest of America, and if it
is your contention that they should, I violently disagree.

When able-bodied people are on welfare and yet the fast food industry
is having trouble filling staff positions, I might conclude that there
is insufficent incentive for these people to get jobs. When a relative
of a friend of mine can't keep their ranch in Nevada staffed (at
$400/month PLUS food and lodging) because people can get more money by
crossing into California and collecting welfare, I might conclude that
the welfare benefits are too high.


> And what percentage of welfare recipients vote?  So how likely is it
>really that they're going to eliminate anyone who votes against
>welfare? Compared to the people who would vote *for* you when you said 
>you were going to lower taxes by cutting welfare?

It's not just welfare recipients. It's people like yourself, people
with the best of intentions who take the naive view that poor peoples'
problems would be solved if they just had more money, when the reality
of the situation is that higher benefits just make the inner-city
welfare culture larger, more insular, harder to break out of, and more
demeaning and demoralizing.


>When most conservatives said welfare reform, they meant,
>or at least it was suspected they meant, eliminate welfare.

Umm... That would be "reduce" welfare, as well as change the system
such that the money goes more directly and effectively toward the
people who need it and the things they need.


>Liberals
>disagreed with that, of course,

Of course.


> and had to spend so much energy fighting
>*that* idea that they couldn't also work on *good* welfare reform.

"Good" welfare reform always seeming to involve spending more money.


> Also, many conservatives *opposed* workfare for the longest time,
>calling it government make-work jobs.

I was pretty solidly in favor of workfare until this got me trying to
think of a good reason to oppose it.

The problem is that welfare was designed to aid the _transition_ from
one private-sector job to another. If people were given workfare
"jobs" instead, care would have to be taken that nobody, not the
recipients, not the bureaucrats, not Congress, not the general public,
confuses them with "real" jobs. Workfare could very easily change into
"give all the unemployed people government jobs". The distinction is
much more important than it may seem.

I am still a proponent of workfare, if only to counteract the
incentive people currently have to do nothing and collect only
slightly less than they would if they had to work for a living.
However, with this new consideration in mind I am not as unequivocal
as I once was.

I'm very pleased; I participate in net discussions at least as much to
get my own neurons firing as to persuade. Thanks, David.


                                   Cordially,

                                        -g
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.politics.homosexuality