Should welfare recipients be required not to have children while on welfare? Agree or disagree? Why

[Anonymous]

Your assumption is that you are talking to conservatives.

[Anonymous]

Oh but it's okay to assume that every woman on welfare with a couple kids is inherently irresponsible and needs to be proactively prevented by the government from bringing any more children into the world.

[Anonymous]

Hey, I made a proposal and amid all the sniping, everyone ignored it.

Why not make long term contraception (Mirena/Norplant) available to anyone of childbearing age, for free?

*It's proven to dramatically reduce abortion.
*It will very much reduce children born to poor single mothers.
*It only costs $1b per year.

This should be simple. If it is so important to solve these societal problems, then let's just solve them. Sure, it won't cover those who have a religious objection to them. But it will go a long, long way.

[Anonymous]

That's nice but not enough. Any adult who wants welfare must get on bc, not just have the option. And I am a liberal. As long as women and men , blacks and whites are treated the same, I have no problem with it. No one on this thread has convincingly articulated why it would be so awful. Keywords: voluntary, choice, temporary, removeable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's nice but not enough. Any adult who wants welfare must get on bc, not just have the option. And I am a liberal. As long as women and men , blacks and whites are treated the same, I have no problem with it. No one on this thread has convincingly articulated why it would be so awful. Keywords: voluntary, choice, temporary, removeable.

So you're putting men on bc too? How is that going to work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's nice but not enough. Any adult who wants welfare must get on bc, not just have the option. And I am a liberal. As long as women and men , blacks and whites are treated the same, I have no problem with it. No one on this thread has convincingly articulated why it would be so awful. Keywords: voluntary, choice, temporary, removeable.

Also, you're going to put 60 year old women on bc?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:21st century Jim Crow (separate and unequal) in full effect.
Yeah you're a citizen and you've got freedom and rights in theory but you're poor and in all likelihood a minority so we'll just amend those freedoms and rights as we see fit since in reality you're not a full-fledged citizen.
Gotta love it.

Here's a different angle on this discussion. Fundamentally it's more about money than it is about rights. You have the rights and freedoms to swim laps in a banana cream pie 8 feet wide if you want to. IF you can afford it. You shouldn't have an expectation of taxpayers to cough up the money for your pie-sloshing frivolity. Similarly, it should never be your expectation to just pop out a bunch of babies when you have no means of support, and just expect the taxpayer to take care of your irresponsible frivolity there either. Just because you have the right to have babies doesn't mean you have some kind of God-given right to receive taxpayer money to help support them. And if you do receive money, why shouldn't there be preconditions on it? There are routinely preconditions on receiving money - when you borrow money for a home mortgage there are terms and conditions you must agree to in order to receive the money. Don't agree and you don't get the money. Screw up, and the deal is revoked. When organizations apply for grants, there are terms and conditions they must agree to in order to receive the money, and so on. Why should this be any different? Why should it be free money with no strings attached in this case? Why not have people agree to programs that would put them on a path to better economic and family stability as terms and conditions for receiving the money?

Please cite the welfare programs that hand out money "for free without strings attached" and that increase the more children the recipient has.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:21st century Jim Crow (separate and unequal) in full effect.
Yeah you're a citizen and you've got freedom and rights in theory but you're poor and in all likelihood a minority so we'll just amend those freedoms and rights as we see fit since in reality you're not a full-fledged citizen.
Gotta love it.

Here's a different angle on this discussion. Fundamentally it's more about money than it is about rights. You have the rights and freedoms to swim laps in a banana cream pie 8 feet wide if you want to. IF you can afford it. You shouldn't have an expectation of taxpayers to cough up the money for your pie-sloshing frivolity. Similarly, it should never be your expectation to just pop out a bunch of babies when you have no means of support, and just expect the taxpayer to take care of your irresponsible frivolity there either. Just because you have the right to have babies doesn't mean you have some kind of God-given right to receive taxpayer money to help support them. And if you do receive money, why shouldn't there be preconditions on it? There are routinely preconditions on receiving money - when you borrow money for a home mortgage there are terms and conditions you must agree to in order to receive the money. Don't agree and you don't get the money. Screw up, and the deal is revoked. When organizations apply for grants, there are terms and conditions they must agree to in order to receive the money, and so on. Why should this be any different? Why should it be free money with no strings attached in this case? Why not have people agree to programs that would put them on a path to better economic and family stability as terms and conditions for receiving the money?

Food stamps, housing, Medicaid.

Please cite the welfare programs that hand out money "for free without strings attached" and that increase the more children the recipient has.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's nice but not enough. Any adult who wants welfare must get on bc, not just have the option. And I am a liberal. As long as women and men , blacks and whites are treated the same, I have no problem with it. No one on this thread has convincingly articulated why it would be so awful. Keywords: voluntary, choice, temporary, removeable.

Why restrict it to people on welfare? Every kid you send to public school is a tax on the childless. And it's a benefit that amounts to almost $200K per child. Financially, it blows food stamps out of the water.

[Anonymous]

You can't make someone get on birth control that is outright unconstitutional. Going to extremes such as making it mandatory for a woman to get a contraceptive implant in order to receive aid for her family is the type of Gestapo tactic you'd imagine overseas not here in the USA. There are several states that have a family cap for welfare recipients meaning they don’t give any extra money for new children if someone in the household is already receiving aid. That's about as intrusive as state and federal governments can get. If states adopted such a law for welfare recipients would they suddenly require all Medicare recipients to get the patch to ensure they don't smoke and further complicate their Heath Care costs? Would they make in-home surveillance monitoring mandatory for disability insurance applicants to ensure they aren't faking a bad back? I understand wanting to keep people from abusing the system and not wanting to waste tax dollars but not at the expense of abusing basic rights and wasting even more tax dollars.

[Anonymous]

Despite 13 pages of debate, I have yet to see anyone cite any evidence that there is actually a material problem with the current system that results in people on welfare breeding willy nilly just to get more benefits.

A long time ago Reagan popularized (and politicized) the idea of the "welfare queen," (also based on an anecdote and without actual evidence, but they didn't call him the Great Communicator for nothing), but that was a long time ago and there have been a lot of changes to the safety net since then.

So, rather than throwing out stereotypes as a reason for your position, why don't the people who think that this is actually a problem provide some evidence of the problem (bearing in mind that the plural of anecdote is not data). If you can't find evidence, then perhaps you should consider whether your opinions have been manipulated.

[Anonymous]

I don't think it is a poor issue, it is an educated/class issue.

I am and have been dirt poor (i would've been homeless if i didn't have extremely generous family who are comfortably middle class; I don't draw public welfare however) - I have grad degree in a semi-technical subject from a top 25 private university.

I made sure I did not and am not having kids in my current state. I don't need others to dictate due to my financial circumstances. I am not an idiot, I know not to have them in my current predicament.

Instead of forcing birth control, educating people better would be the more humane solution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Despite 13 pages of debate, I have yet to see anyone cite any evidence that there is actually a material problem with the current system that results in people on welfare breeding willy nilly just to get more benefits.

A long time ago Reagan popularized (and politicized) the idea of the "welfare queen," (also based on an anecdote and without actual evidence, but they didn't call him the Great Communicator for nothing), but that was a long time ago and there have been a lot of changes to the safety net since then.

So, rather than throwing out stereotypes as a reason for your position, why don't the people who think that this is actually a problem provide some evidence of the problem (bearing in mind that the plural of anecdote is not data). If you can't find evidence, then perhaps you should consider whether your opinions have been manipulated.

Who the [bleep] are you supposed to be, the Supreme King Chancellor of Anonymity?
Nobody has to cite, prove, persuade, justify, certify, or clarify a damn thing to you - if you are too stupid and stubborn to understand something then that's your problem. Ignorance is just as much a basic human right as having a child, but if only people who can afford it should be allowed to have kids then only people with a shred of intelligence should likewise be afforded explanation when they can't comprehend shit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Despite 13 pages of debate, I have yet to see anyone cite any evidence that there is actually a material problem with the current system that results in people on welfare breeding willy nilly just to get more benefits.

A long time ago Reagan popularized (and politicized) the idea of the "welfare queen," (also based on an anecdote and without actual evidence, but they didn't call him the Great Communicator for nothing), but that was a long time ago and there have been a lot of changes to the safety net since then.

So, rather than throwing out stereotypes as a reason for your position, why don't the people who think that this is actually a problem provide some evidence of the problem (bearing in mind that the plural of anecdote is not data). If you can't find evidence, then perhaps you should consider whether your opinions have been manipulated.

Who the [bleep] are you supposed to be, the Supreme King Chancellor of Anonymity?
Nobody has to cite, prove, persuade, justify, certify, or clarify a damn thing to you - if you are too stupid and stubborn to understand something then that's your problem. Ignorance is just as much a basic human right as having a child, but if only people who can afford it should be allowed to have kids then only people with a shred of intelligence should likewise be afforded explanation when they can't comprehend shit.

Given the incoherence of this response, clearly ignorance is a fundamental right (although I'd expect that your high school English teacher might be embarrassed to admit that you were a student).

It's unclear what the point of your response was, or what position you're trying to advocate.

Perhaps you'd like to try again?

[Anonymous]

Ah the beauty of democracy. Points can be made arguments can be asserted and opinions can be insisted but at the end of the day the people decide what is the law via vote and not forums.