No crime before welfare? I've heard plenty of stories dating back to biblical times (wasn't the 'Good Samaritan' a story about a mugging?) that describe criminal events borne out of poverty. Meanwhile, I think the first welfare state was set up by a Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck-Schönhausen in Germany, sometime between 1871 and 1890.

So yes, if you want to see it like that, welfare could be described as a bribe. I don't really see a problem with that. It's cheaper to pay off a welfare payment than it is to employ and equip a policeman.

Of course, you need a balance - and always need a mixture of the two (support and supression), which, from what I understand, is the system you have there.

If we could live in a world of full employment, and equal opportunity, and all, that would be wonderful, but we don't live in that dream world and we never will.

So choose; welfare, with the downside being a proportion of lazy parasites, or no welfare, and expect gun toting desperados. Because without one, you get the other.

Both systems have their ups and downs. I suppose you could say that at least the people who take the law (and whatever else they can get hold of) into their own hands are at least showing a bit of initiative, eh?

I don't disagree with you about revamping the system. As it is currently operated, it is inefficient, ineffective, and driven by ideology on both sides and not by empirical evidence. I don't, however, see this as a reason to completely dismiss public programs (as you seemed to do above) as a remedy for the situation - they just need to be 1. targeted to the populations that need them most, 2. focused on prevention (but not to the exclusion of remediation), and 3. to the greatest extent possible, based on empirical knowledge about what works. But we also have vested interests on both sides that refuse to listen to the science, insisting on the one hand that the government has no business intervening in early childhood development since it's a "family issue," and insisting on the other hand that assistance be handed out scattershot with no consideration for efficacy and accountability. And we have patently counterproductive policies in place, such as insisting that TANF recipients who have infants less than 6 months of age work in order to maintain eligibility for benefits, without providing for any kind of alternative child care assistance. We have Head Start funding depending on purely cognitive outcomes, when all the evidence shows that the cognitive skills do no good once the kid hits school without the social and emotional skills to go with it.

Sorry, getting off topic...

Bottom line, I believe wholeheartedly that there is a role for the public sector in ending the cycle of poverty, and that role needs to be informed by best practices and empirical evidence, which it's currently not. But that argues for reform, not dismantling the system. A main problem is that many policy makers are unwilling to make the necessary long-term commitment to funding the programs that work. They're more expensive than the programs that DON'T work but that have been in place for a long time; but they actually pay off in the long run.

First of all, it is capitalism that has created a permanent underclass. It is not helpless, just complacent. Second, you seem to be just assuming that it is only this helpless and permanent underclass who are responsible for lawlessness in new orleans. Greed and idiocy know no socioeconomic class.

Of course we didn't. Then again, before welfare we had bonded labour, slavery, a lower class who believed that God Himself had relegated them to their fate, and an upper class who killed peasantry at will.

So while we're comparing completely nonsensical situations, let's go back to not using cars, since before we had cars, we didn't have AIDS. We shall cure AIDS by completely ceasing the use of any automotive method of transportation.

People have already responded to UsTwo's inaccurate allegations against welfare, so I'll just add: not only is capitalism the cause of the permanent underclass, welfare is one of the few things actually helping to slow the increasingly large divide between rich and poor.

The Tragedy of American "Compassion"
 

As Americans, we have completely failed the poor. The root of the failure can be traced to the decline in the popular belief in the Social Contract. Our "help" has turned too many Americans, of all classes, into dependent, helpless wards of the state. By not insisting that people work for their own survival and the survival of their kin; by failing to insist on moral behavior in return for public assistance; by creating giveaway programs that addict good folks to free food and shelter; by devaluing public education by begging or bribing children to attend; by not treating people like full human beings by failing to hold them accountable for their choices; by inculcating them with half-baked, self-destructive, revolutionary and racist ideas that forment anger, resentment, and a sense of entitlement; all of these attempts at compassion have ended in tragedy. Our "compassion" has failed because it is the kind of compassion that should be reserved for rabbits, but not human beings. A bunny in a hutch is given everything it needs to survive, and in return, its keeper asks for nothing. This type of "compassion" showered on human beings robs them of the essense that makes them human-- the ability to choose, fundamental dignity, and self-worth. This, I submit, is the outcome of the American welfare system.

Personally, having let my addiction and ego take me to places where I didn't want to be, I can see how people (especially the poor who are more and more unable to get a good education in public schools, and are further and further away from college as tuitions go up and aid bottoms out) feel they can't make it.

Jobs are shit, wages are shit, health insurance, overtime, any form of benefits are becoming things of the past or totally unaffordable, and heaven forbid you expect to be treated with respect or semi-decent on the job. Yet, we expect people to do it. And to be honest it takes a very strong person to do it, and have people laugh at them, berate them, treat them as inferior and totally disregard them.

And yet we as a society expect these people to go in day after day and take this as they get further and further into debt.

Makes sense to me. Let the poor stay freaking poor and give them no hope..... then any aid we do give them make them feel guilty over, make them feel like they are leeches for wanting to live a decent life.

What we need to do is pump massive amounts of money into education and job training. Instead we leave them poor, undereducated and we treat them as undeserving and that it is their fault. It's bullshit.

Welfare isn't the answer, but it can help when used properly to get people into school and job training so that they can advance.

Give a person a true chance at making the most he possibly can out of his life, then if he/she screws up it is truly on them. But as a society we are judged by how we treat our poorest and how we have tried to help..... and what I see is 1 party throwing blame, cutting anything they can and belittling those that need the help to advance... and another party with good intentions yet they just throw money at it and don't work to better anything, they just feel the money alone will help.

The solution is there and we can do it..... however we have 2 parties so interested in power, being right, not compromising and pleasing their radical (and most vocal) constituencies, they refuse to even truly try to reach a solution.

I was lucky..... my family had money and bailed me out 1 last time.... unfortunately there are too many out there that don't have that luxury and eventually just give up... and no it's not a weakness in character..... It's a weakness in society for allowing that to happen as the rich CEO's make more and wages for the hourly and true labor force decline.

I don't think there are too many mean people on TFP but sometimes people get caught up in the politics of events and come off too strong on one side or the other.

I find it hard to get too upset with people on the low end of the economic scale taking advantage of the system when so many of our polititians, CEOs and wealthy seem to be lining their pockets at the public's expense.

Shot back. Sooner or later the dumb voilent ones will get themselves killed, and the rest of us can go in peace with a cleaner gene pool.