Republicans are too Liberal!!!

[Sava]

Social welfare programs work... only about 10% of people on welfare are chronically poor. Most are people that lose their jobs so some corporate fatcat can get a huge bonus.

You're entitled to your opinions Japher, but they are based on little fact. As with most conservatives, your opinions are ideological, and not based on real world evidence. I'm considered a "liberal" but I'm, in reality, a pragmatic thinker. I agree with the politicians that want such policies. More of them tend to be Democrats. Whether or not the Democratic Party is truthful in executing an agenda that parallels their rhetoric is another topic entirely. The fact of the matter is, the Republican rhetoric and ideology is wrong... and their actions and policies, which rarely follow their rhetoric, are even more obscene and immoral.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Tassadar5000
Can anyone guess which country has the highest standards of living in the world?

Definately not Russia.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Definately not Russia.

That depends. They would have the highest living standards, if having chronic borscht diarhea is considered a high standard of living.

[Sava]

News Analysis contains excerpts from the For Expert Comment service. The service, which provides timely faculty comments to media across the country, is distributed by the Office of University Communications.

Mark R. Rank, Ph.D., associate professor of social work, is an expert on poverty, welfare and social policy. Rank recently analyzed a national survey of 13,000 American households to determine the extent of intergenerational welfare use. His findings, to be published this month in the Journal of Marriage and Family, disprove the notion that welfare traps many of its recipients into a chronic cycle of dependency.

The study, supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, found:


only 25 percent of recent welfare recipients said their parents had used welfare.

only 10 percent of current welfare recipients grew up in households that frequently used welfare.

only 5 percent of all welfare recipients were chronic welfare users (reporting welfare use in four of the last six years) who also grew up in households where parents were frequent users of welfare programs.

Thus, while many politicians claim that welfare reform is essential to break the "vicious cycle of dependency," Rank's study demonstrates that the vast majority of welfare recipients are first-generation users.
"So much of the welfare debate is based on this notion of chronic welfare dependency: freeloaders whose families abuse welfare from one generation to the next. Yet our analysis shows that this stereotype fits only a very small portion of the population," Rank said.

Nevertheless, Rank did find that children raised in families using public assistance are indeed more likely to use welfare as adults when compared with those growing up in non-welfare households. While previous research has suggested a correlation between childhood and adult welfare use, Rank's study breaks new ground in the welfare dependency debate by using complex statistical analysis to demonstrate why this link exists.

"Interestingly, this connection has little to do with welfare per se," Rank said. "Rather it has to do with poverty. Children from families who have relied on welfare usually come from families with low incomes. If parents have limited finances, their children obviously are going to have less opportunities, less resources. Our analysis shows that this translates into less education, less job skills and therefore, an increased chance of needing welfare assistance as adults. The bottom line is that rather than being a learned lifestyle, welfare dependency is simply a by-product of poverty."

The only important caveat is that a family history of welfare use does appear to increase the likelihood that a daughter will go on to become a female head of household -- a category that tends to be heavy users of the welfare system.

to support my chronic poverty assertions... this is from 1995

I must apologize, my earlier claim of 10% was vague on non-descript... here's a more detailed explanation of chronic poverty:

Myth: People on Welfare Become Permanently Dependent on the Support
Fact: Movement off Welfare Rolls Is Frequent
A prevalent welfare myth is that women who received AFDC became permanently dependent on public assistance. Analyses indicate that 56 percent of AFDC support ended within 12 months, 70 percent within 24 months, and almost 85 percent within 4 years (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). These exit rates clearly contradict the widespread myth that AFDC recipients wanted to remain on public assistance or that welfare dependency was permanent. Unfortunately, return rates were also high, with 45 percent of ex-recipients returning to AFDC within 1 year. Persons who were likely to use AFDC longer than the average time had less than 12 years of education, no recent work experience, were never married, had a child below age 3 or had three or more children, were Latina or African American, and were under age 24 (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). These risk factors illustrate the importance of structural barriers, such as inadequate child care, racism, and lack of education.

more myths about welfare can be found at http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/myths.html

Welfare makes up about 1% of the government budget. To be so concerned with "My Tax Dollars Funding A Welfare State" is silly. 99% of your money goes to other programs. If it's government waste you are concerned about... do more research. Our Vice-President still gets money from Halliburton, a company with one of the highest amounts of government waste/fraud attached to it.

[monkspider]

Originally posted by Sava
I'm considered a "liberal" but I'm, in reality, a pragmatic thinker.

Me too.

[History Guy]

Well, they're all politicians, anyway.

The problem with them is that no one has a safe big enough to stuff them in for a trip to the bottom of the ocean.

[Sava]

Me too.

monkspider: Ha! I hope you are being tongue in cheek, Mr. TheRevolutionIsComing... I doubt there are many who are more idealist than you

[monkspider]

Originally posted by Sava

monkspider: Ha! I hope you are being tongue in cheek, Mr. TheRevolutionIsComing... I doubt there are many who are more idealist than you

A little bit of self-parody never hurt anyone.

I was wondering if anyone was going to call me on it.

[Al B. Sure!]

Sava:

What about welfare abuse though? there's plenty of people who make a nice amount of change under the table at jobs or they do semi-illegal or down-right illegal things but still collect welfare? with an emphasis on food stamps over checks though, things aren't as bad as they could be but abuse def is a problem.

[monkspider]

Well Albert, my philosophy on that is if someone needs money so bad that they have to cheat the system, then we should give them twice as much.

[DinoDoc]

Welfare makes up about 1% of the government budget.

"Entitlement" programs eat up much more money than that.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
Sava:

What about welfare abuse though? there's plenty of people who make a nice amount of change under the table at jobs or they do semi-illegal or down-right illegal things but still collect welfare? with an emphasis on food stamps over checks though, things aren't as bad as they could be but abuse def is a problem.

Have you ever collected welfare? I have twice. Once when I was fresh out of school and couldn't find a job (I got one and ended up collecting two week's dole in total). The second time when I had graduated and I had to register for the dole in order for my wife to get a married student allowance.

Both times I was treated like an ignorant criminal (oddly enough, by people who couldn't even spell). Trust me, very few people want to keep going through that crap.

[Al B. Sure!]

Agathon:

and yet people do it regularily... trust me. i'm not making this up.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
Agathon:

and yet people do it regularily... trust me. i'm not making this up.

However, as Sava showed, it is statistically rare. Lambasting the whole system based on the malfeasance of a few is irrational.

[MRT144]

japher, republicans are in the majority and they dont have to throw a bone to anyone. they are simply doing what any politician does which is pork projects and party platform spending such as the military.