Should people on welfare have to give a urine sample for help?

• BoatShoes

  gut;1747194 wrote:Yeah, but my perspective is we already have plenty of gubmit employees sitting on their asses not earning their paychecks. There aren't too many govt jobs out there needing done that some bureaucrat hasn't already found a way to get budgeted.
  

  So don't use any new government employees. Just have the government provide capital to social entrepreneurs. Create a market for the marginally employable and the unemployed and the folks on public assistance and public assistance as we know it will become obsolete. If the social entrepreneur does not create value the project ends and they move onto another project. And over the long run if you want a more efficient and smaller government this is going to have to be the starting point IMHO.
• O-Trap

  

  BoatShoes;1747340 wrote:The proposals we have talked about have administration done through the non-profit, social entrepreneurship and venture capital sectors - so no new government employees. Government just supplies the funds. This in essence makes the government a market maker for the marginally employable and the free market will find valuable things for these folks to do.
  
  Again, no gubmint employees. If people were serious about wanting to actually reduce the size of government this is the way to go because this market could demonstrate ways to improve social conditions better than local government agencies which could engender desire to end the programs.
  
  So all of your objections are defeated. The private sector creates the jobs and there are no new government employees. The government just provides the capital. And, it costs 3% of GDP vs. the 15% of GDP that welfare and private charity for the poor costs.
  
  This market will create way more value than having people on welfare who do nothing or people being massively unemployed.

  I'm curious about the level of intermingling between governing agencies and these private entities. As a general rule, I don't love the idea of a relationship that involves governance maintaining oversight, but using a private entity to carry out a project. Blackwater comes to mind.
  
  I say this for a couple reasons. (1) The governing agents may have the ability to either coerce or outright force an element of the population to show some form of favor toward the private entities that did not originate from the public's view of the merit of these entities. (2) It may provide a means by which governing agents can have something done that is outside the scope of what government is permitted to do, leaving them to wash their hands of it. Again, see Blackwater.
  
  However, if that relationship isn't the case, then I suppose my objections are moot.
• BoatShoes

  gut;1747194 wrote:
  You want fewer people taking less welfare, you cut the amount and term of benefits...and get out of the way of the private sector to create jobs. It's the proven solution.

  In 1837 the United States suffered a massive depression during the most free market period of our history. There was no national debt, no central bank and no welfare state. Yet, unemployment soared at 10% for five years and mobs took to the streets raiding warehouses for food. The anarchist ideas of Josiah Warren started to catch on in the United States and the people's revolutions took place in Europe in 1848 and soon you had full on socialist revolutions that swept the world.
  
  There is never enough jobs to go around for able bodied people in capitalist society and eliminating the welfare state is a one way ticket to reviving the threat of communist revolution. The West has largely defeated communism through the Welfare State because nobody wants to go eat the rich when they can still eat decent food.
  
  But the Welfare State has divided the working class against itself because millions are aghast at the thought of some people being able to eat and shelter themselves without having to engage in wage-labor.
  
  So let's just provide capital for private social entrepreneurs to hire the least well of instead so that they might "earn they bread with sweat."
  
  Then we can stop listening to people complain about welfare abusers and we don't have to worry about them getting together and starting a revolution..
• BoatShoes

  O-Trap;1747344 wrote:I'm curious about the level of intermingling between governing agencies and these private entities. As a general rule, I don't love the idea of a relationship that involves governance maintaining oversight, but using a private entity to carry out a project. Blackwater comes to mind.
  
  I say this for a couple reasons. (1) The governing agents may have the ability to either coerce or outright force an element of the population to show some form of favor toward the private entities that did not originate from the public's view of the merit of these entities. (2) It may provide a means by which governing agents can have something done that is outside the scope of what government is permitted to do, leaving them to wash their hands of it. Again, see Blackwater.
  
  However, if that relationship isn't the case, then I suppose my objections are moot.

  I'm not as concerned about the government providing a check to Habitat for Humanity to hire the poor to rip down dilapidated homes in their community as I am about the government creating a de-facto private military company.
• BoatShoes

  like_that;1747195 wrote:Again, the government doesn't have to "employ" them. If they require x amount of volunteer hours anywhere, they don't have to waste the money on supervising them.

  You would still need to supervise people and in any case the Maine program is being touted as a success because there are fewer people on food stamps but the evidence indicates that these people dropped out of the work force in its entirety and are now pursuing social security disability as Maine has seen a drop in the labor force participation rate and not an increase in employment.
  
  Most people hate volunteering. Just provide capital to entrepreneurs to hire people.
• QuakerOats

  When will the welfare trust fund run out of money?
  
  Oh wait, that's the social security trust fund that actually had trillions paid into it by workers and matched by their employers ...............only to then be raided by liberal politicians to buy votes from welfare recipients and low-information voters.
• O-Trap

  

  BoatShoes;1747350 wrote:I'm not as concerned about the government providing a check to Habitat for Humanity to hire the poor to rip down dilapidated homes in their community as I am about the government creating a de-facto private military company.

  The nature of what the private entity is hired to do, however, is somewhat up to their discretion, and I tend to not trust people in positions of power where there isn't public oversight. The former still leaves ample room for kickbacks, contracts obtained through shady or illicit means, and potentially abuse. I don't know these to be inevitable, but I would neither be surprised to hear about them. As far as general practice is concerned, I'd submit that the surest way to prevent a governing entity from abusing its power is to not grant them sufficient power to abuse. Voting for people I trust, if any such exist, and perhaps giving them projects with which I think I can rely on them is a distant second.
  
  The problem with Blackwater isn't just what it does. It's that much of its functioning can run unchecked in a public manner. Defense is indeed one of the primary responsibilities of a federal government as outlined in the original documents, and while such private organizations might be hired under the auspices of helping fulfill that duty, it removes the checks in place to regulate or prevent abuse of power. Now, in Blackwater's case, abuse of power has the potential to lead to the ending of innocent life intentionally. I might trust my leaders not to abuse that power, but the potential for doing so exists, nonetheless.
  
  The same potential to abuse power would exist in many public-private contracts, even if it might be less likely to result in the intentional ending of innocent life.
  
  All in all, I would just say that I don't think it wise to permit the colluding of two such entities: one that is primarily driven by profit and the other that has the power to enact and enforce laws. That is an oppressive cocktail, I would suggest.