[LinusKS]

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This is true. Wealthy democrats nor wealthy republicans, nor wealthy apolitical people would want to trade places with a poor person. I do not remember anyone stating that they would want to do this or that that life would be better than other more common lives where people work, etc. If I missed it please point it out to me. If not what is your point?

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The point is that healthy, non-addicted, middle-class people blame sick, crazy addicts to avoid feeling any responsibility for anyone but themselves. And - coincidently - to pat themselves on the back for having been fortunate in life.

I know, this could *never* happen to you. But I'm telling you you been lucky - whether you want to admit it or not - and you don't need to break your arm patting yourself on the back about it.

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You have not made a case for why entitlement programs are the best way to assist the poor. My point is that they reinforce dependency and not working.

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Are there people who game the system? Of course there are. Just like there are people at your work who take "sick" days, when they're not really sick, and don't chip in their quarter for their morning coffee. And traders at Enron (and a hundred other companies), who game the system for themselves, at the expense of innocent consumers.

Crazy drunks and addicts aren't any less likely to game the system than anyone else, and given that they're living on the edge, they have a hell of a lot more reason to game the system than anyone else.

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If your job paid you 75% of your current salary for not showing up and you got to keep your medical care would you be showing up at 8am every day? I sure as hell wouldn't.

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I'm not sure what you're talking about here.

If you wear your underpants on the outside of your pants, chances are you don't have a job, and you're not going to get one. If your address is "the shopping cart on the corner of 11th and Hobo Lane," your resume is going straight to the circular bin.

I'm also not sure what your talking about re: medical insurance. If bums are getting free health care - from the looks of the ones I know and see - they're not getting their money's worth.

Yes, it is true that if a homeless guy shows up at the EM with one of his arms hanging by the skin, they will make some effort to stitch it up before they boot him out again.

The other option is to let him bleed to death on the sidewalk next to the sliding glass doors.

That'll teach him, eh?

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The situation with people on social security is that they were struggling and marginally employed before.

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Before what?

Before they realized the CIA had implanted a chip in their haed? Before they woke up in the alley next to the dumpster with two fingers missing and no idea how they got there?

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Some have no work history. Of course some are not capable of gainful employment, but many do have the ability to be (re)habilitated. But where is their incentive?

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If you really think life as a homeless person is enough incentive, I'm not sure what you want to do to incentivize them. Electric shocks? Work camps?

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They are getting paid for not working. Pay me for not working and what are you going to get? A non-working me, that's what you will get.

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So why aren't you not working?

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So no, doctor's and lawyers are not dropping out of school to get on the SSI gravy train. But people with sporatic work histories and social problems who have difficulties are being given all types of handouts. What is that teaching them? How is that helping them?

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What is your solution?

Do you seriously think there are no welfare-to-work programs?

Did you not know about Clinton's welfare reform program?

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Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.

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This simplistic platitude is entirely inappropriate to the situation. The problem here isn't lack of skills.

Btw, if you live somewhere where they can fish, you will see bums fishing.

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Give me a free fish every day for a couple of years and I'm going to be sitting on your doorstep when you wake up with my hand out. I don't get the fish I'm going to bitch and complain. Maybe if you required that I go to the lake with you and if you required that I learned how to bait a hook, etc... I would be in a better position. Get it?

And it is not 'supposedly' that he gets social security. The vast majority of all long term homeless people get social security.

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Where's your statistics? What's your source?

Link, please.

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I have worked in the field for over a decade.

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That's nice.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I don't take arguments on the basis of personal authority. I could say, "I've worked in the field ten years," or 15, or whatever. I don't, because nobody here knows me, and they have no way of judging the veracity of anything I say.

It's not a good argument for the internet.


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You are not going to hear this from many social service workers because they get paid to 'help' dependent people. They do not have incentives to make those people independent. That is reality too.

You think I get paid more money if I help my clients get rehabilitated better and faster than my peers? lol Hell no I don't. You know what I get? I get to graduate my clients and get more clients with more serious problems. So the harder I work the harder my work gets.

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That's the case in many fields. It's a challenge for a lot of us.

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My peers who don't
challenge themeselves and their clients coast along in their routine and their clients don't improve and their job is relatively easy compared to someone working hard to help people improve.

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By definition people who work hard work harder than people who don't. You're better off if you take pride in your work, without worrying about slackers who don't work as hard as you.

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But at the end of the day everyone gets paid the same. In the poker world and the financial world you get paid based on results.

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When your results are dollars, that's easy to do. It's not so easy when you're trying to do something besides generate cash flow.

If you're a writer, you could produce a masterpiece, and watch while hacks get their hackneyed plots turned into movies over and over again. You could be a painter, die in poverty, and be recognized only after you're dead a hundred years.

You could be the only honest accountant at your firm, get fired for your honesty, and watch while the go-along, get-along guys get promoted for twisting the truth.

There's a lot of unfairness in the world.

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Entitlement progams are the problem (sure some people need them as they are significanlty impaired and can't really make much progress, but that is not the mainstream)

So no, it wasn't really well put.