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From: rick@uwmacc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: How about helping our own
Message-ID: <583@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Dec-84 14:48:19 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.583
Posted: Tue Dec 18 14:48:19 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Dec-84 01:13:26 EST
References: <709@loral.UUCP> <191@talcott.UUCP> <1887@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: rick@uwmacc.UUCP (Rick Keir)
Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center
Lines: 34
Summary: 

[ This bug has gone to the Bahamas ]

>I hear comments from American Citizens like 'I do not need a high school
>education wlefare will take care of me" and see generations and
	Really?  Where's you hear these comments?  On the net? :-)

>generations of families( the same family) on welfare I begin to wonder
>about the welfare system. THERE IS NO ENCOURAGEMENT TO GET OFF OF IT.
	Certainly, one can cite examples like yours, of food stamps being used
to pay for steak.  Or poor people with TV sets, or cars, or ....  None of
this gets around the fact that being on welfare is a nasty, brutal way to
live.  
	You are correct in saying that there is no encouragement to get off of
welfare, though.  Several years ago, I talked to a young woman who was 
receiving various sorts of aid for her and for her children.  I was working
for a Congressman at the time.  She called because she'd gotten a job offer.
She'd figured out the salary she'd make working full time, minus the
various deductions the government wanted.  Then she'd subtracted the cost
of transportation to and from work (a long way even by bus...not a walkable
distance).  Then she'd figured out the cheapest rates she could get for
someone to look after her kids when they weren't in school.  The result?
	If she took the job she'd work 40 hours a week, leave her kids in the
hands of others to rear when they were young, and have considerably less
money than if she just stayed on welfare.  No one could find a loophole
for her.
	She asked me why the system was this way.  I couldn't tell her.  
-- 
"And we'll have some kids, they won't be a bother
 as long as they're just as dumb as their father."  -- The Stupid Song
		by Peter and Lou Berryman

Rick Keir -- MicroComputer Information Center, MACC
1210 West Dayton St/U Wisconsin Madison/Mad WI 53706
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