I'm a liberal, no tears here. Would love to see a similar plan enacted all over, especially in big cities in California (some small-town concerns that make it impractical).

My personal plan would be to just "hire" these people on a day to day basis and give them shitty jobs around the city--cleaning up sidewalks, picking up trash, etc. Stuff that anyone can do, but funded on the government payroll. Keep track of their reliability, that way they get some work experience, have some sort of proof that they can be depended on (or not), get to eat/welfare benefits, but they still are providing something to the city (not just collecting checks on their asses). I think it's a nigh-perfect solution to this problem. The Maine solution is similar to mine, and it's honestly close enough (with the option of volunteer work being basically identical to what I propose) that I'd love to see it implemented widespread.
/e
One problem with the Maine solution though is that the "undesirables" have to find someone who will take them...a lot of the time, I'd imagine people like that would get rejected as volunteers even, let alone for waged work. Communication of the new regulations would be a challenge as well, especially considering the mental stability/education level of some of the homeless.

This post was edited by BardOfXiix on Apr 11 2015 03:07pm

Ban yourself. Your vision is scat..

There are bad apples in every policy. So just throw them all away... Makes sense..

This post was edited by ttSe on Apr 11 2015 03:19pm

I would rather see people who are serving time in all county jails doing these things for reduced time

The only reason the urban underclass exists is because it is functional in our society. If it was dysfunctional we would have done away with it a long time ago. As it is now it is a great way of keeping wages artificially lower than they should be because there is always an available supply of cheaper labor somewhere....workers of last resort, if you will.

The implementation of welfare has been a disaster, and it needs serious reform. We need it to be here, but it shouldn't deincentivize people to improve themselves the way it does in certain ways. For example, if you have state health insurance, you shouldn't love it for getting a low-wage job. Universal health care would solve many of our welfare and employment problems.

This post was edited by Skinned on Apr 11 2015 03:28pm

i didnt read the previous 26 pages obvsly tl;dr, but did anyone bring up family situations? or the fact that depression is a real thing? Pretty sure losing your job, being put on such a strict / reduced budget could trigger some serious mental shit...

Like being the sole breadwinner then suddenly not being able to. yeah it most certainly can


That Maine deal sounds so fiscally tight and snug and so let's catch all of the deadbeats, but do you also realize that so many people fall through cracks of the Federal and State Descriptions of : disability- for one sure if you are blind or have a terminal illness. Or a disability that is easy to demonstrate like amputations, severe Strokes, parallelizations.
but many debilitating causes will not be recognized. Yet can stop a person from carrying on any real day to day functioning.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/4/13/most-public-assistance-goes-to-working-families.html



Completely shits all over the topic of this thread.

Are people on welfare supposed to do a bunch of volunteer work and work 40+ hours a week? Completely unreasonable.

This post was edited by Skinned on Apr 13 2015 05:26pm

Man you make it seem so easy. if that were the case shit we would have no poverty, the richest people in the world would up more than 1% of population, everyone would be living in nice homes driving nice cars right? Nobody wants to be poor unfortunately but that is just the way it is for some people due to like other posters have said unfortunate events in life.Now tell me this "MR.I HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS" you got thousands of people in college/university lets say for example a type of engineering job or any other high paying job per say. When they all graduate there is no way there is gonna be enough jobs available at once to all those graduates. So guess what now if they go by your shitty ass philosophy they gotta work a minimum wage job while paying back their school loans, which you never even brought into the equation which can get expensive while at same time saving up to go back to school for something else which most people end up doing.So tell me how can they afford to live now?moving us not an option either because they have no money. Your posts keep referring to what you have seen on this site, i dont know if your basing all this off what you have read on here? if you have thats just pathetic clearly you need to actually get out more. Do you live at home? if not i also suggest try living on your own while trying to make it in this world its not easy and life always throws obstacles at you setting you back, doing what you said will most likely have someone commit suicide in a fit of depression. Like i said before theres just not enough jobs available to graduates and they are all stuck with bunch of degrees working retail until a job opens up. now the whole just be an entrepreneur lets talk about that, now that should be real easy also to right? just think of something thats never been done before,build it,patent it, then go to the bank with a venture plan and ask for a loan with a shitty job, no assets and school loans to pay back. They will laugh you out of their office so fast so again you dont know what your talking about so might aswell just quit while your ahead.Even people that went from rags to riches or were even born into wealth are not as narrow minded as you are life will hit you hard one day just wish i can be there when it does

No, clearly they'd be exempt from the new rules as they're already working.

this is why i want to send a bill to corporate welfare queens like walmart for all the social assistance tax payers have to provide their employees because walmart is too cheap to pay them reasonably

I'll try to answer 1 by 1 on this...

- The problem is that not everyone has ambition to do that, hence why we don't all have nice homes and cars, only those who work to constantly better themselves do. Of course there are exceptions due to illness and disability. I think people often have a vision of a "hard worker" as a blue collar worker busting his ass day in-day out. I view that person as noble, but naïve. If that doesn't pay what you want it to, grow your skill set and learn a new trade that pays more money.
- There certainly would be enough jobs to fill thousands of engineering majors. However, I think what you're saying is that if there was too much supply of engineers, there wouldn't be the demand to have them paid well. It would take a lot to get there, but then I'd recommend other majors in other growing fields. Or if you're a true engineer, create your own product.
- I did have student loans and I did live at home. I purposely lived at home til I was 22 even though it wasn't the most fun. I worked 40 hours+ per week during my bachelors degree, and applied to a ton of scholarships. I had almost no debt by the time I graduated because of how frugal I was for 4 years. Then I got my MBA right after, which was just $20,000 and I paid that in full within a year as I worked a 8-5 job making $35k a year and saved almost all of it and went to school from 6:00-9:00 4 nights per week for 2 years. If I was not as fortunate to be able to live at home, I'd have rented a room in a house which can be as cheap as $400/month and i'd still only have had maybe $10-15,000 in student loans, which is basically a car payment. I certainly understand the concept of not having anything given to you, and making it work anyways.
- Your point of not being able to move because you have no money is laughable. I can get from Maryland to California for $100 if I really wanted to if I just waited for some Greyhound bus ticket specials or southwest airline specials. Moving for better work is way easier than people think. They just don't want to leave their family and friends most of the time, neither would I.
- The worst point you made is that there are not enough jobs available to graduates. That is not true at all. I assist at a local college helping students find careers. We work with a handful of recruiters whose soul purpose is to fit people into careers. I have an incredibly high success rate at placing students into careers. It's up to them to take the plunge. I cannot explain how many students get a $30-35k/year job offer and say no because of reasons like "the commute is too far" "i just don't like Baltimore" "i don't know if I could handle a job doing _____" "i really would prefer to do ____." I hear it all day. I always advise them to deal with the rough commute, a city you don't love, a field you aren't passionate about, etc., until they find something better. It's not like once you get a job you're stuck forever, you can still keep applying and keep interviewing. A social work degree can still land you a $30k+ a year career easily in a business related field. Just gotta keep applying and keep interviewing. I show students all the time how to burn through 100-150 applications a DAY. One day you can easily do 100+ job applications. CareerBuilder and others have tools that all you do is click a button and it shoots off your resume. I did that when I graduated and got 7 job offers all $30k+ a year within 3 weeks of graduation, and that was with a political science degree.

This post was edited by AspenSniper on Apr 14 2015 01:15pm