From: fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: Drug testing and welfare
Date: 29 Jul 92 18:43:37 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

jonathan@mantis.co.uk (Jonathan Egre') writes:

>fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes) writes:

>> No, just that the Guvmint shouldn't be handling [welfare]. Folks could take
>> out unemployment insurance. 

>Is this supposed to be serious?  Do you seriously expect insurance companies
>to grant affordable unemployment insurance policies to the sort of people who
>are likely to become unemployed?

If they're "the sort of people who are likely to become unemployed" then
no. But *that* is exactly those folks problem and it's time they took
responsibility for fixing it. That means acquiring a marketable skill of
some sort which essentuially means investing some work/time/money in
themselves.


>>                              For the ones that never were employed, well,
>> if they want our money they can ask for it and let us make a decision on
>> the merits of the case. That way we can cut out the Guvmint as an
>> expensive middleman.

>You mean you want to increase the number of tramps on the streets hassling 
>you for money by a factor of, say, twenty? 

Just because I don't think the Guvmint should be doing the job doesn't
mean that I believe taht everyone should put in the effort to do it
individually. I have no problems with people getting together to
disburse charity funds. Folks already do this through churches. There
are also major charities who will do the job for you, feel free to
choose. In fact, if some folks figure that a Guvmint agency would be the
best way to do this then I'm all for their right to send a cheque to the
Guvmint. What I'd like to see is some competition where folks can decide
for themselves which agency is doing best at the job of receiving money
from folks who have it and distributing it to folks who need it.

That way the argument is settled. Jenni can donate her cheque to the
Guvmint/FundyChurch/Agency which will only yhand over cash after the pee
in the bottle ritual. Those of us who figure that folks can decide for
themselves what best alleviates their problems can pass our money
through a conduit with similar outlook.

>And you don't expect the 
>frequency of muggings and pocket-picking to increase?

Depends how much money does get passed on, how efficiently, and how well
targeted. I believe that any competition would allow options that were
more efficient than the welfare state bureaucracy. The money saved might
even be spent on more police to prevent such crimes. There's probably a
tradeoff between money spent on police and money spent on alleviating
poverty. I doubt that the guvmint has hit the tradeoff point.


>There is ALREADY a simple, effective and CHEAP mechanism for making sure that
>welfare recipients spend their welfare money wisely: welfare payments are
>so low that if the recipients don't spend them wisely, they starve.

Clearly not the case since we are already discussing folks spending
welfare money on drugs. I'm prepared to be pretty liberal on the drugs
issue, but I'm not gonna go as far as agreeing that it's necessary.

>--
>Jonathan Egre' = jonathan@mantis.co.uk = jonathan_e@cix.compulink.co.uk
>Word for the day: "peritoneum".  Include it in all your conversations today!

FoFP