Quote Originally Posted by DuncanONeil View Post
The Pattern of Dependence: Length of Time on Welfare

* The 4.7 million families currently receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) have already spent, on average, six-and-a-half years on welfare.

* When past and estimated future receipt of AFDC are combined, the estimated average length of stay on AFDC, among those families currently receiving benefits, is an astonishing 13 years.

* Among the 4.7 million families currently receiving AFDC, over 90 percent will spend over two years on the AFDC caseload. More than three quarters will spend over five years on AFDC. The Heritage Foundation

Is it any wonder we're losing a work ethic in so many homes. Children don't grow up to understand work because they don't see work. Sad. But, in a down ecomomy people cannot afford the taxation to carry others, yet often there is no job for the others to carry themselves with. Don't like either choice. I cannot see improvement unless we go back, create energy indepencence, become competative in the market, and get Government out of both the market place, and chairity business.

Yet there needs to be something. The years of happieness I shared with my wife were possible because of a transplant surgury we could never have afforded. SSI disability paid for it. I cannot want to completely remove a social safety net.

Maybe having the net, but making it uncomfortable would be a solution. For instance, instead of money to use in stores, a card, and limiting purchases to a very few (minimal) items. Instead of new apaartments with air conditioning, new fridges and washers, have simple barracks, wash racks and swamp coolers. Improvement of ones life is a powerful motivator to strive. However, possession of X-Box's, 60" TV's and the ever lengthing line of new cars and pickups, with dealer plates, at the unemployment and welfare offices seems to indicate to me there is no real incentive to try.