rickyp wrote:(And steve, i'm all for personal responsibility. But does society have a responsibility to those children? )

There's the rub. We've come to accept that "it takes a village." It actually takes two parents.

I can cite case after case of irresponsible mothers having children they know they cannot care for. Their motivations are ultimately not as important as the truth that they know, ahead of time, that they are risking pregnancy and cannot care for or provide for a child.

I also know that some young people make mistakes and work like crazy to make things right. How do I know that? I was one.

Doctor Fate wrote:Our societal lack of shame is another component. Schools now provide childcare for students. The message our society gives over and over again is: "there are no consequences for irresponsible behavior."

Isn't the problem that teaching the no good parents some sort of lesson always means you hurt their children too and in turn create another generation of people who will be potential fckups ?

Doctor Fate wrote:
I can cite case after case of irresponsible mothers having children they know they cannot care for. Their motivations are ultimately not as important as the truth that they know, ahead of time, that they are risking pregnancy and cannot care for or provide for a child.

True, that's why we want them to 1) have no sex 2) use contraception 3) get an abortion in that order. Though what do you do when all these things don't take place and you end up with a baby in the hands of a troubled mother or couple.
If you let nature take its course chances are the kid(s) won't turn out better than the parents and be a burden upon society via social transfer or criminality. Might be a good idea to try to intervene at some point, no ?

Faxmonkey wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:Our societal lack of shame is another component. Schools now provide childcare for students. The message our society gives over and over again is: "there are no consequences for irresponsible behavior."

Isn't the problem that teaching the no good parents some sort of lesson always means you hurt their children too and in turn create another generation of people who will be potential fckups ?

Either way this goes, it's tough. If you make it easy on the teenagers by the government providing everything, then the message is "Have a kid at 16? No problem."

If the goal is to shame/shun them, then the babies suffer.

So, what's the answer? Threading the needle. Discourage teen pregnancy. When it occurs, don't coddle the parents but help them to succeed by encouraging them to work hard, not by giving them everything.

The bigger issue is parenting. We have become a society that believes kids from about 10 on can parent themselves. Whatever they lack in terms of knowledge can be filled in by the schools. Parents? Too busy pursuing their own careers and/or Xbox achievements to parent their own kids, then mildly dismayed by the results.

High schools should not offer daycare. That is ridiculous.

However, ultimately, parents need to be involved in their kids' lives until their kids leave home. If you don't want your teenager to get pregnant or get a girl pregnant, know what they're doing. "Trust, but verify." It works far more reliably than contraceptives.

Faxmonkey wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:
I can cite case after case of irresponsible mothers having children they know they cannot care for. Their motivations are ultimately not as important as the truth that they know, ahead of time, that they are risking pregnancy and cannot care for or provide for a child.

True, that's why we want them to 1) have no sex 2) use contraception 3) get an abortion in that order.

Removing religion from the matter for a moment, I don't know that any woman can remain unaffected by abortion, particularly a teen. A parent offering this should just know that they have failed and are teaching their kids something they may not want them to "learn."

If you let nature take its course chances are the kid(s) won't turn out better than the parents and be a burden upon society via social transfer or criminality. Might be a good idea to try to intervene at some point, no ?

We often read the complaint that the US jails more people than anyone else. I wonder if, in part, it hasn't exploded with the availability of welfare. The message is that you can get something without work, which is precisely what criminals believe.

The goal of government assistance should be, unless there is physical infirmity, to help the person learn how to support themselves, NOT to teach them to rely on the government.

Doctor Fate wrote:
We often read the complaint that the US jails more people than anyone else. I wonder if, in part, it hasn't exploded with the availability of welfare. The message is that you can get something without work, which is precisely what criminals believe.

I don't know wether that's true. One would assume that this trend would show in every (or at least many) countries with a well developt social security system which i don't believe is in evidence.
Maybe there could be a slight increase in criminality due to a sense of entitlement, i don't know but i really don't believe you can draw a straight line to increased incarceration rates, that's it's own problem.

Doctor Fate wrote:The goal of government assistance should be, unless there is physical infirmity, to help the person learn how to support themselves, NOT to teach them to rely on the government.

It should indeed.

Often people on the right say they'd like government to be run like a business...
If that were really the case, then there would be far more people on welfare (indeed eve a minimum income) and far fewer in prison...
Why? It would be cheaper to keep people on a minimum income and out of prison then to house them in prison.

Pardon me for illustrating this with Canadian statistics but I'm sue they are similar elsewhere.

Less than 10 per cent of Canadians live beneath the poverty line but almost 100 per cent of our prison inmates come from that 10 per cent. There is no political ideology, on the right or left, that would make the case that people living in poverty belong in jail.
Statistics underscore the bleak link between poverty and incarceration. While aboriginals, many mired in poverty, represent 4 per cent of Canada’s population, they make up almost 20 per cent of those in federal prisons.
With all costs factored in, Canadians spend more than $147,000 per prisoner in federal custody each year.
By contrast, it would take between $12,000 and $20,000 annually to bring a person in Canada above the poverty line. Even at the high end of the GAI scale, this represents savings to taxpayers of $127,000 per federal prisoner each year. Those are figures that should be of interest to any federal or provincial finance minister — of any party background

.
source: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/941753--tough-on-poverty-tough-on-crime
If poverty is indeed one of the things that drives crime, then the elimination of poverty would seem worth the investment...

The point behind this, is that the focus on rooting out lfare abuse is self defeating. Focusing on the funding of programs that focus and drive people to educate themselves, and benefits themselves is more likely to achieve positive results than punishing and restricting and "making people pay for their mistakes."
Well educated people aren't likely to seat on their ass and live off welfare. Hell, in Denmark people can sit on their butts for 90% of what they used to make in well paying jobs, but few do.... Why would anyone think that people do the same thing for the pittance welfare provides them? All you guys do is keep coming up with anecdotes, but where 's the poll that says 90% of welfare recipients wouldn't have it any oterh way? Doesn't exist. Most want a route out, they just havn't blearned or been shown what that route is... And too often the dumb ones decide the easy way out is criminal behaviour...

Education (and parenting) and an environment of peers that pressures one into achieving something of their life... all of that drives people towards achieving something.
I agree with Steve that welfare should have a point to it, and not just be and end to itself. But, even if it were, and we paid people just to stay out jail, that would be better than seeing them fall into criminal behaviors out of; necessity, restricted ambition or envy, or peer pressure... or a drug habit.
(I ain't arguing against prisons for dangerous people...I'm just saying that so many poor people end up there because they are born poor. If welfare is sen an investment in eliminating crime, then the payout is there. And that makes business sense...

steve

I don't know that any woman can remain unaffected by abortion,

Nor can unaffected by any woman who's given up her baby for adoption at birth. Nor any woman who's raised a child whilst still a child herself. Especially the one's who do so alone, with little support. And in the latter case, its the unusual child who doesn't end up as the next individual to cycle through poverty...

Unplanned parent hood is the largest cause of poverty. And yet rationale arguements about sex education, counselling of teens and availability of contraceptives are fought tooth and nail - usually by the same people who want to eliminate welfare.
Prevention is always less expensive than cleaning up the mess later. (Thats what welfare seems to be, cleaning up the mess of unplanned parenthood)

and a system that continually rewards one for being on welfare (and below the poverty line) is supposed to eliminate the problem you speak of how? By rewarding them and allowing them to continue to live on the dole, by not breaking the cycle we do nothing but keep this group exactly where they are. Something to encourage them to lift themselves out of their predicament is what is needed, not something that encourages them to stay there.

GMTom wrote:and a system that continually rewards one for being on welfare (and below the poverty line) is supposed to eliminate the problem you speak of how? By rewarding them and allowing them to continue to live on the dole, by not breaking the cycle we do nothing but keep this group exactly where they are. Something to encourage them to lift themselves out of their predicament is what is needed, not something that encourages them to stay there.

I kinda doubt it's that much fun to live on social welfare and i'm not really sure that the main problem is that people are lazy. How many of them really are men capable of working and how many are single mothers for example.

Ever been to an American Inner City?
Don't tell; me what I already know, you assume they want out, and that's true for a great many, but there are plenty who are happy to do nothing and work on ways around the system trying to get what they can out of it. And the single mother situation, there are PLENTY, they live with the Father but don't get married so they collect more and I have seen it myself over and over and over, they go and have more kids so they can collect more from the government.

They system and the entire way of life this segment of society lives, it's an accepted institution, food stamps and such are not embarrassing, they are simply they way you live.

rickyp wrote:steve

I don't know that any woman can remain unaffected by abortion,

Nor can unaffected by any woman who's given up her baby for adoption at birth.

Cheap.

Is there a difference between, say, the regret a woman may feel over giving her baby a chance at a better life versus the regret of ending its life? No woman carrying a baby buys the "it's just tissue" or whatever argument the abortionists use. Eventually, most come to understand they have ended a life.

Nor any woman who's raised a child whilst still a child herself. Especially the one's who do so alone, with little support. And in the latter case, its the unusual child who doesn't end up as the next individual to cycle through poverty...

Yeah, there are probably a lot of women thinking, "I'm so glad I saved my child a life of poverty. She's so much better off being dead."

Unplanned parent hood is the largest cause of poverty.

Wrong. Single parenthood is the largest cause of poverty. There is a difference.

And yet rationale arguements about sex education, counselling of teens and availability of contraceptives are fought tooth and nail - usually by the same people who want to eliminate welfare.

Lies.

There isn't enough education about sex? Good night! Kids of 5 years of age are being taught about homosexuality in our fair commonwealth.

Strangely, as every generation does, teens rebel today. So, they are taught "safe sex" and they look for alternatives or look to "rebel" by having unsafe sex.

"Kids" today have unprecedented knowledge about sex. The problem is not a lack of education.

Counseling? Ditto.

The problem is parenting. Period.

Funny thing...
This topic is about welfare abuse. Would you think anyone would defend welfare abuse? Well, he turns the phrase around but seems to do just that, as Ricky shifts further and further left. Fix the problem? oh hell no, continue supporting these poor hapless "victims" of the rich upper classes?
Could we possibly have an entire society of poor and lazy people who work harder at scamming the system than supporting themselves? ...nope, he knows better and we must maintain the status quo even though it doesn't work, he knows better and while he does not support the abuses, he dismisses them as a way of life. (life in big government I guess?)

tom

Funny thing...
This topic is about welfare abuse. Would you think anyone would defend welfare abuse?

Actually I didn't defend welfare abuse Tom. I stipulated that in the two or three cases that Green brought up as examples of abuse that I would prosecute.
I've just argued that I don't think there is a lot of welfare abuse. And you've provided nothing that refutes that other than your personal experience of inner city America. (Really? Rochester?)

We've seen statistics that show that 98% of federal welfare is going to single mothers... And so far everyone seems to agree that mostly, single mothers need a hand.
You've made the ridiculous assertion that there are women out there getting pregnant repeatedly for the welfare checks. In a country of 350 millions I suppose you can find an exceptional person like that. But where are the facts backing this assertion up to where its a measurably and well known and experienced phenomenon. ?
If you have any real solid evidence to bring to the table perhaps I'll change my mind about whether or not there is genuine welfare abuse at a significant level. But if all you have is your anecdotes and personal experience - I'll go with the real information.

As for the last post - that's an attempt to introduce some rationale thought about the societal purpose of welfare... Its not there just because we all believe everyone deserves to live in dignity. At a minimum. (Although I think many do beleive thats worthy by itself.)
Its there because its a worthwhile investment in the future stability of society. Its there so that more people don't turn to crime. Because crime is very expensive.
And punishment of crime is very expensive.

steve

There isn't enough education about sex?

I went out to see if this was a valid point. It might be.. The only way to know would be to compare other nations and see. The US has the highest rate of teen preganancies in the western world. What is so very different? .

Sex education may not have the influence that many assume in averting teen pregnancy, suggest new international data that find U.S. teens have babies at much higher rates than peers in many countries, regardless of the sex education received in those countries.
"I don't think sex education has anything to do with teen fertility," says sociologist Julien Teitler, director of the Social Indicators Survey Center at Columbia University in New York. "The evidence really doesn't support that, when you look at the differences between countries in teen fertility and sex education."

He says Finland and the Netherlands, for example, have a history of comprehensive sex education; there's almost no sex education in Greece, Italy and Ireland. Yet teen birth rates are much lower in all those countries than the USA's 42 births per 1,000 women ages 15-19.

Teitler's figures, 2005-06 vital statistics and birth data from a dozen countries will update a study he conducted on 1960-95 data published in 2002 in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Other new international data come from Advocates for Youth, which supports comprehensive sex education. Its not-yet-released report on adolescent sexuality in the USA, France, Germany and the Netherlands shows more contraceptive and condom use in Europe, and higher rates of sexually transmitted disease, abortion, pregnancy and births in the USA. Teen birth rates here are more than four times higher than France or Germany.

Group president James Wagoner has some insight as to why there are differences, based on years of interviews.

"They are far more open to discussing sex … than in the U.S.," he says. "There is a cultural norm that teen pregnancy … interferes with your future career. That is really, really clear."

SO what does this mean? Is it the US's uniquely religious nature versus other western nations?