I wouldn't starve them tho. food stamps are ok.
but other parts of welfare like cash based support should be done away with. this is what keeps people in proverty. no incentive to get out.
Originally Posted by dilbert firestorm
This country desperately needs to have welfare reform but no politician will ever touch it. Probably because of a fear of losing votes. The current law allows you to receive welfare benefits indefinitely. Receiving welfare is not just a lifetime sentence for the person receiving the benefits. Future generations of that family will also receive the same sentence.
Most welfare recipients are not capable of taking one big step and becoming self-sufficient in a short period of time. Most of them are capable of taking baby steps toward becoming self-sufficient, but the current system offers them no incentive to do so. Every additional dollar they earn brings a corresponding loss in welfare along with it. Getting a better job nets them no extra income. Most of them can't see why they should bother doing that, so they don't.
Finally, over the years politicians have found some very creative ways to camouflage how much is actively spent on welfare each year. An example of this is food stamps. Food stamps are not considered to be a welfare expenditure at all. They are part of the farm bill every year. In fact food stamps are annually the biggest single expenditure of the farm bill.
Another example is the refundable tax credits. These are listed in the payment section of Form 1040 and will add to your refund if your tax liability has been satisfied. The worst of these is the Earned Income Tax Credit. This first appeared in 1973 and has been increased by every president since. For 2020, a married couple with 3 children making slightly less than $20,000.00 will received an EITC of $6,600.00. Yes you read that right.
Now add that to the Additional Child Tax Credit of $5,400.00 they will get and this family will get a tax refund of $12,000.00 even if they had no federal income tax withheld from their paychecks. Think about that for a minute. In the 15 minutes it takes for them to have their tax return prepared, they will receive more than 1/3 of the total money they get that is related to their job for the entire year.
Of course this leads to rampant tax fraud with welfare queens that do not file taxes selling their kid's SSN's to the highest bidder so that person can get these refundable credits on their tax return. The measures taken by the IRS so far to combat this have been completely ineffective and totally worthless. Again, these refundable tax credits do not count as a welfare expenditure.
I do not see this changing anytime soon. First, it has taken us roughly 80 years since the beginning of social programs for us to get to this point. We are not going to fix this overnight. Second, no politician wants to even attempt this because of the large block of voters this would alienate. The last thing I saw about this said that 45% of all Americans now receive some sort of social assistance. I can't remember if that number included people on Social Security or not. Even so, that is a huge block of voters that no politician will ever want to risk alienating.
So we are stuck with this until the country can no longer afford it anymore. Then what happens? Who knows? But it will not be anything good.