RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (Full Version)

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ChatteParfaitt -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 4:50:13 AM)

There is no question that the minimum wage in the US needs to be raised, not by me at least. There is no question that welfare benefits should be increased as well, again, JMO.

You know, it's a basic, the US govt is funded by taxes, and guess what? People who work pay taxes.

This means there should be many, many programs in place to educate people and get them working, no matter what their individual circumstances are. It's not like there isn't a ton of work to be done here. Elderly need housework, cooking, taken to doc's appts, none of this is highly skilled work.

Mothers with children need childcare, again, not highly skilled.

If you took everyone currently on welfare a/o some kind of benefit and put them to work, not only would they pay taxes, we'd have excellent care for our elderly, our disabled, and our children.

Why isn't that happening, right now? Because the current climate in the US govt will not allow it. That's what needs to change. How people think.

And getting people to think differently is very difficult, indeed.





SparksFly1 -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 4:50:47 AM)


USA will be GREECE in 10 years. When the money runs out all hell will break loose.



meatcleaver -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 4:51:22 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: ChatteParfaitt

Sorry, I call them welfare scroungers without any problem at all.

Who wants another example? I have plenty.




No one is denying there aren't some people on welfare who are scrounging but they are a miniscule amount, even according to government figures indicating long term unemployed. In fact maladministration is more costly than benefit fraud.

Anyway, mass unemployment is a rightwing government policy to suppress wages and keep those serfs with jobs working for peanuts.

Oneanecdote isn't evidence of mass welfare scrounging. There just isn't any evidence for mass welfare scrounging. Welfare costs are going up because the economy has been in recession and is now stagnant. Individual claiments are being squeezed, in affect to give welfare to the rich and that is the real scandal. 



leonine -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 4:53:55 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ChatteParfaitt


This is very common, and is not going to show up on any govt stats b/c the govt doesn't know about it.
Of course, all the state's paid investigators can't be expected to discover the truth as effectively as someone looking up and down their street. Any conspiracy buff knows that.
quote:


To say the scroungers are rare is just ludicrous, and I am possibly one of the most liberal and socialist-leaning persons involved in this discussion.
Possibly. And possibly you're right about all the official statistics being wrong. Or possibly not.



Edwynn -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 4:54:34 AM)

You made a claim that the only way that the US or the UK could afford to deal with those in need is to bust the scroungers. In so doing you necessarily brought in government fiscal issues. There are any number of ways that government could afford, or not, a number of expenditures, programs for the poor or any other programs.

I pointed out who the largest scroungers were, as have a few others in this thread.

In any event, the OP was as much about media misdirection and popular notions as it was about government assistance to the poor, and pointing out the reality of who the worst offenders are is most certainly on topic.




ShadowMasterTX -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:08:59 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: SparksFly1


USA will be GREECE in 10 years. When the money runs out all hell will break loose.



Why was was this cry never made while we were spending trillions on a war in Iraq? In Afghanistan? In Serbia?

Was is Social Security considered an entitlement? Do you consider your pension plan, or your 401k to be an entitlement?

When I retire in 20 years, my annual benefit will be about the same as what my annual contribution for my employer and I is today. Yet, I'll have paid in this in for the next 20 years, having paid in smaller (but significant) amounts for the past 20 years..

Yet, we want to call this an entitlement?

We're not going to be Greece because we're not offering full retirements, at full pay, at age 55. Not including the growth of money from interest, I won't get back what I paid in unless I live past 100 years old.

Maybe, just maybe, we need to modernize what we collect, and cut out the crap of what we spend. When people are in charge of government money, they spend it like it doesn't matter.

I watched as the county I lived in spent $22 million to get a highway interchange planned. A year later, then sent another 9 million back to the same designer to have them check to make sure the plans were still good.

That was five years ago, and it hasn't been built yet.

Lets work on preventing "Bridges to no where", or billion dollar defense projects that are not needed (or even wanted). Our government spends $100,000,000 as easily as I spend $20.



tazzygirl -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:11:39 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: metamorfosis

I'm sure there are plenty of people who really need it. But I have to contradict the OP. No, freeloaders are NOT as rare as meeting a celebrity in person.

Pam


I have met about 10 celebrities. I can honestly say I do not know 10 freeloaders. Mileage and all that.



leonine -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:14:56 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ChatteParfaitt
Elderly need housework, cooking, taken to doc's appts, none of this is highly skilled work.
That's what the Thatcher government thought when they cut the standards for care home. We've spent the last twenty years cleaning up the resulting mess of abused and neglected vulnerable old people who the home managers thought could be cared for by anyone on minimum wage.
quote:



Mothers with children need childcare, again, not highly skilled.
[/quote/So, you reckon all the standards for licensed childcare are just needless red tape, and you'd happily let your children be taken by someone with no training or certification? Suit yourself, but I value my children higher than that.
quote:


If you took everyone currently on welfare a/o some kind of benefit and put them to work, not only would they pay taxes, we'd have excellent care for our elderly, our disabled, and our children.
Is your plan to put them all through nurse or teacher training for free? Because I can promise you that most unemployed people I know would give their eyeteeth for such real, marketable skill training, but you do realise how much that kind of training costs? I bet you wouldn't want your taxes to fund it.

Or do you reckon that you could put people straight off the street into schools, hospitals and care homes, and by the magic of free enterprise they'd suddenly be competent to do what it takes the professionals years to learn?

Bush Senior tried to produce hundreds of new teachers on the cheap by making the training colleges cut their standards, and that's why my eldest son got a job in an American school. Because US teacher training is now so bad that any school that can, hires foreign trained teachers.

The New Deal was possible because it hired people for unskilled work that anyone off the street could do. A New Deal for teachers and nurses would be a wonderful thing, but you have no idea what it would cost or you wouldn't suggest it so casually.



ShadowMasterTX -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:15:07 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: leonine


quote:

ORIGINAL: ChatteParfaitt


This is very common, and is not going to show up on any govt stats b/c the govt doesn't know about it.
Of course, all the state's paid investigators can't be expected to discover the truth as effectively as someone looking up and down their street. Any conspiracy buff knows that.
quote:


To say the scroungers are rare is just ludicrous, and I am possibly one of the most liberal and socialist-leaning persons involved in this discussion.
Possibly. And possibly you're right about all the official statistics being wrong. Or possibly not.


I have no doubt they are wrong, but that doesn't mean they are lower. It could be the abuse is worse, but it could also mean that the abuse is not.



ChatteParfaitt -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:16:28 AM)

The issue of govt benefits to big business was broached well before I entered the thread, darlin.

As for staying on topic, let's agree to disagree now, I suspect we'll be having to do a *lot* of that.

BTW: I am in total agreement that the US is hemorrhaging funds to big businesses who do not need it, and that is just one example of the poor use of the hard earned US tax dollar.



farglebargle -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:19:28 AM)

quote:


Why was was this cry never made while we were spending trillions on a war in Iraq? In Afghanistan? In Serbia?


What do you mean 'while'?

We're still flushing 47% of our money down the military-industrial toilet with NO RETURN ON THE 'investment'.

You want to fix the budget? Stop wasting money on shit like keeping B-52's flying and building useless aircraft carriers.




ChatteParfaitt -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:20:41 AM)

My knowledge of UK programs are limited, since I don't live there.

Any program such as I am suggesting would need oversight, not by bureaucrats, but by those who have managed to get off benefits and so know the issues involved, along with the loopholes.

You assume I think there are easy answers to this complex problem, there aren't. Again, the only way to effect real change is to alter how people think.




tazzygirl -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:21:27 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ChatteParfaitt

Sorry, but I'm going to totally refute the statement that scroungers are rare. They are not. In the example given above, the people involved simply lied. One took money under the table, the other lived with a man not her husband who contributed to her support.

This is very common, and is not going to show up on any govt stats b/c the govt doesn't know about it. These people were not ashamed to take benefit, far from it, they were proud to be using the system.


Anyone who thinks it's rare for people to be proud to be using the system to get benefits they are not entitled to is not in touch with reality. Now, that's JMO, but I can supply more examples. Many, many more. There have been a *lot* of welfare recipients go through those two houses on my block in the last 4 years. The ones not using the system in some way were the rarity.

And it's not just my little town. When I lived in Chgo, before I had children I volunteered for a program that helped families in Cabrini Green. I got very up close and personal with several families who lived there, as did my two friends who volunteered with me.

Now, I'm not saying that there are no people who need and I do mean need benefits. There are, and they should be taken care of. Some need much more monetary, educational and health care than they are currently being given.

But the only way in hell the US or the UK is going to be able to afford to give those people what they need is to bust the scroungers.

To say the scroungers are rare is just ludicrous, and I am possibly one of the most liberal and socialist-leaning persons involved in this discussion.






Many states offer rewards for turning people like that in. Did you report them?



PeonForHer -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:25:14 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn



You made a claim that the only way that the US or the UK could afford to deal with those in need is to bust the scroungers. In such claim you necessarily brought in government fiscal concerns. There are any number of ways that government could afford, or not, a number of expenditures, programs for the poor or any other programs.

I pointed out who the largest scroungers were, as have a few others in this thread.




Not that I want to accuse Chatte or anyone else here of such, but this is one way in which indoctrination works. (I don't think we got to that matter on the 'Indoctrination' thread.) You (that is, the government, the powers-that-be in general) don't *argue* with the people's views - because the main strategy is to bypass their conscious and reasoning abilities altogether.

What you do is continually pump one set of facts at them as opposed to another. That is, in this case, the facts of this or that benefits scrounger, rather than this or that millionaire. Then, you generalise out,(by hint and implication rather by hard statistics or anything else logical, natch) from the example of this one benefit scrounger to *all* claimants of benefits. You do *not* do this with the case of the millionaire scrounger, though. He was just 'one bad apple'.

The end result is not that the indoctrinated typically deny that there are millionaires who steal. They just don't have any great feelings invested in the matter. They will say, 'That's awful too, we should stop that kind of thieving by millionaires. I'm against thieving at the top as well as at the bottom'. But, then, they'll go right back to arguing about scrounging by those at the bottom and demanding that the government 'crack down' on it.

It doesn't matter, incidentally, that this kind of conditioning doesn't work on everyone. In fact, it's quite advantageous if some resist it. This is because you've created a 'divide and conquer' situation. The fire isn't being aimed at you at the top - that's the important thing.



farglebargle -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:31:45 AM)

http://otda.ny.gov/resources/welfare-fraud/

Reporting Welfare Fraud Committed in New York State

This page is only for reporting welfare fraud committed in New York State, for the following programs:

Public/Cash Assistance
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (formerly known as the Food Stamp Program)
Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP)

To report welfare fraud being committed in a state outside of New York, visit the United Council on Welfare Fraud’s website to find contact information for welfare fraud reporting in other states.

To report other types of fraud committed in New York State, see Additional Fraud Reporting Resources below.

To report suspected Child Abuse/Child Maltreatment in New York State, call 1-800-342-3720. This is the toll-free number for the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment, operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by the NYS Office of Children and Family Services.
Examples of Potentially Fraudulent Welfare Situations

Unreported Income (either earned or unearned)
Hidden Assets (bank accounts, property, etc.)
Unreported Changes in Household Composition (either someone moved into or out of the home)
Unreported Changes in Shelter Costs/Falsified Shelter Costs
False Parental Custody
SNAP Trafficking (Selling EBT cards for money, drugs, etc.)

Welfare Fraud Reporting Form

Please complete OTDA’s Report Welfare Fraud Online Form if you suspect, or have knowledge of, a social services client fraudulently receiving assistance in New York State from:

Public/Cash Assistance
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (formerly known as the Food Stamp Program)
or Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP)

Once the form is completed, you will have the option to submit it electronically, print it and mail it in or fax it to the address indicated on the form.

Thank you for your assistance in helping to maintain the integrity of New York State’s assistance programs.
Additional Fraud Reporting Resources

New York State Medicaid/Medical Assistance Fraud - call 1-877-873-7283.
SSI (Supplemental Security Income) Fraud - call 1-800-269-0271.
Social Security Disability Insurance Fraud - call 1-800-269-0271
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Vendor Fraud - call 1-800-424-9121 or email [email protected].



ChatteParfaitt -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:35:47 AM)

No, I did not report them. Why? B/c it is not my job to be the welfare benefits police, not to mention that any reporting I would do would merely be a drop in the bucket.

However, I really don't see how the issue of my reporting them or not is germane to the discussion, except that I am saying things you don't like, so your response is to look for ways to 'get me on my back foot.'

Sorry, that doesn't work well with me.

I am more than happy to agree to disagree, though.








tazzygirl -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:39:22 AM)

Because, for me, its the same with people complaining about Disability fraud. The saying goes something like.... If you arent part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Anyone can lie to a case worker. Those who are defrauding the system know people wont report. So its blatant, out in the open. My feeling is, I am the government, same as every other citizen. If I see a crime, I should report it, regardless of it being a murder or welfare fraud. If I dont report it, what right do I have to bitch about the rates?



meatcleaver -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:43:39 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: farglebargle

What do you mean 'while'?

We're still flushing 47% of our money down the military-industrial toilet with NO RETURN ON THE 'investment'.

You want to fix the budget? Stop wasting money on shit like keeping B-52's flying and building useless aircraft carriers.




A bloated military always kills the economy and the American military is killing the USA. Just imagine if all the money the US has thrown at the military and on military adventures was invested in the real economy, America would be looked at with green eyed envy it was in the 40s, 50s and 60s by the rest of the world.

That being said, the US is still the richest country in the world and the only reason there is poverty in the US is down to the economy being skewed towards the rich at the expense of the poor.

Ditto UK. 



ChatteParfaitt -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:50:34 AM)

Should I have reported the dope dealing? Why? I believe pot should be legal. It's so very easy to say you should report all crimes.

Really? I can just see my local police department dealing with me as I call in to report every traffic offense I see on my way to run errands later.

Oh, you didn't mean traffic offenses? Where do you draw the line?

Sorry, I don't think a police mindset is going to help this issue in the least.

Personally, I've learned you can effect much more change by being helpful and accessible, as opposed to hostile.

I help people in my community, and not just through volunteer organizations. I have neighbors I'm helping to learn how to garden, how to cook, one I help with her grocery shopping (she has no car.)

I've helped numerous people over the years with everything from DV issues, child care, school issues with disabled children, to helping the kids themselves by volunteering in school's reading programs.

I chaired the Great Books program in my kid's grammar school for 10 years. (Great Books is a program that teaches critical thinking).

That's my own take on how to be part of the solution.






tazzygirl -> RE: Welfare benefit scroungers - the evidence just doesn't add up. (12/3/2012 5:59:30 AM)

quote:

Should I have reported the dope dealing? Why? I believe pot should be legal. It's so very easy to say you should report all crimes.


Then why make it the issue of your fraud case?

quote:

Really? I can just see my local police department dealing with me as I call in to report every traffic offense I see on my way to run errands later.

Oh, you didn't mean traffic offenses? Where do you draw the line?


Always the extremes. This is like saying.... you have no limits? Kill yourself. Cut off your arm. We both know I didnt mean traffic offences. But its a way for you to two step your way out of the argument.

quote:

Sorry, I don't think a police mindset is going to help this issue in the least.

Personally, I've learned you can effect much more change by being helpful and accessible, as opposed to hostile.

I help people in my community, and not just through volunteer organizations. I have neighbors I'm helping to learn how to garden, how to cook, one I help with her grocery shopping (she has no car.)

I've helped numerous people over the years with everything from DV issues, child care, school issues with disabled children, to helping the kids themselves by volunteering in school's reading programs.

I chaired the Great Books program in my kid's grammar school for 10 years. (Great Books is a program that teaches critical thinking).

That's my own take on how to be part of the solution.


And yet you are the one complaining about rampant fraud in the system. I dont feel there is... I see people bending the rules, even breaking a few, which everyone jumps all over. But its ok if the guy sells pot because you feel it should be legal. But he damn well better not try and improve his gf's/wife's life through that endeavor. And how do you know the woman's lungs were bad because of her weight? Could it be that she was in Disability instead of welfare? We had a fire ball in a plant in my home town. Many of those who didnt die ended up with permanent lung damage.

Its so easy to settle back and judge others based upon what we believe is right or wrong. If I believe its right, then I can turn a blind eye to the rules being broken. If I believe its wrong, then I cant. Thats the way you are as well. But, to me, its hypocritical for me to use what I wont turn put down because of my own beliefs as an example of something I truly abhor.



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