Solution to welfare: Contraception

"While some would argue that this is a violation of the welfare recipient's freedom, I would argue that the rest of us who are forced to work 4 to 5 months per year for the government suffer a greater loss of freedom."

I would argue that breeding is a privilege, not a right.

I can argue both ways! My mom was on welfare while supporting my brother and I. Our father had left when we were toddlers, and my mother, despite her best efforts, needed some help. I don't like being a burden on society, but it's not like my mom was a trailer-trash whore or anything. And she got off welfare in...a little over a year I think. We're all well and good now, and I can't say it would be the same w/o a little gov.'t aid. I do, however, see both sides, and there is a difference between trying an failing and not trying at all...kudos to you for touching on a debatable subject, many kudos!

You seem to have a misconception of exactly who is on welfare these days. They are overwelmingly seniors or disabled persons. I don't think either of these groups would benifit from your suggestion. There is, of course, aid to families with dependent children. Threatening to sterilize the parents would certainly keep them from applying for beinfits. They might just go back to not feeding their existing children properly instead, or turning to crime to support them.

I've always felt forced contraception would be a good idea too, but as you already mentioned, there would be many people against this. Although they'd say it'd be cruel to do that to a man or woman, I feel it's more cruel to allow a man or woman to breed children for more welfare.
Maybe, so as not to punish the people who only need welfare to get back on their feet, forced contraception should only go in effect if the recepient has a child while on welfare.

Draginol, Draginol, Draginol, you never stop do you? This argument is tired, you will never respect, or agree with someone else's opinion. I wrote about this subject a week ago, you in turn wrote about this same subject. Now again? You want to force contraception on people? Davhill was right, most people on welfare are elderly, or disabled. Due to the welfare reform bill that Clinton signed into law, there is a 5 year lifetime cap on welfare. That means that you can only receive welfare for a total of 5 years. Here's the part I'm sure you will love Draginol, if a child is on welfare, when he or she grows up, they can't EVER receive welfare. If a person's been convicted of a felon, once she's out of prison and tries to resume her life, she can't get welfare for her kids. That person getting out of prison might not have any skills, and 9 out of 10 times she will revert back to a life of crime. Which in turn would force someone to take care of any kids she may have. Increasingly, elderly people are forced to raise their grand kids. They will have to take their social security checks and raise the children, and often it's not enough, so they will have to receive welfare. How much do you think welfare's costing you? Compare it to housing and feeding a prisoner because some poor child had a Mother or a Father who didn't have any job skills whatsoever, and only taught him or her a life of crime. Seems grim doesn't it? You can't force someone to take contraception, you can't take away someone's free will. That's akin to playing God. As I've said before, we can't act as the moral conscience for the poor, or anybody for that matter. You act as if all of your tax dollars go toward welfare. If that's what you think, I'm here to tell you it isn't true. You aren't working that extra 4 or 5 months to take care of someone on welfare, maybe a week or two is for welfare, the other time is used for other things. Things like the military, Homeland Security, and other things that are needed to run this country. I don't think you'll be happy until everybody who's on, or who's ever been on welfare apologize to you for being dumb. That's what you think right, every "poor person's dumb", everybody on "welfare's dumb", everybody who "doesn't have a high school diploma is dumb". Those are your words, not mine. Stop beating a dead horse. Complain about some other form of welfare, like, hmm, let's see, corporate welfare. There's certainly a lot more of that going around. I bet more of our tax dollars go toward corporations who don't want to pay taxes, than poor people.

People are forced to do many things. How many American men were forced to "sign away their free will" by registering for the draft? Requiring those applying for welfare to take contraceptives doesn't take away their free will. They're allowed to deny the contraceptive and forget about welfare.
Although I disagree that people in poverty or on welfare are dumb, I do wonder why somebody wouldn't have a high school diploma, so I could agree that dropouts are dumb unless they dropped out to do something meaningful such as becoming a secret agent.
As for corporate welfare, it might just be me, but I see the corporate welfare as more of an investment, as corporations also bring in money. Meanwhile, whose benefitting from welfare besides the recepients?
Also, I'm sure people would love to have an extra week or two of vacation in lieu of helping those that aren't helping themselves.

If I belt out an article calling for the sterilization of welfare mothers that makes me a racist, narcissist, or a troll.

"...so I could agree that dropouts are dumb..."--Messy Buu

Dropouts tend to fall into two categories, dumb and extremely intelligent.

Every dropout I've met says they drop out because it's too easy for them, but how is doing nothing with their life more intelligent?

How is dropping out of HS equivalent to doing nothing with your life?

It's not the dropping out part that's equivalent to doing nothing. It's the not doing anything with their life that's equivalent to it. If they have reasons to drop out, like they are John Connor and must stop Skynet, that's different, but usually they don't.

LOL. Most people on welfare are elderly or disabled? Um no. Most people on public assistance are young, female with 2 or more children. That isn't open to dispute. That is stastical fact, Luscure.

I've never met an intelligent high school drop out. And the statistics on poverty certainly don't help their case either.

Bottom line: It is not society's fault to raise other people's children. If you can't afford to have children, don't have them. If you are too ireresponsible to take care of children and require society's help to pay for them, then society should have a say over whether you can have them while you're on the dole.

Luvscure, I can't think of how to put this any more succinctly: You are incredibly ignorant on this particular issue. First you buy into some weird story that the elderly are the ones mosty on welfare? (which is totally untrue unless social security and medicare/medicaid has now been reclassified for this argument when it should be clear what type of welfare we're talking about). But now you're arguing that we spend more on corporate "welfare". Do tell. How much do we spent on corporate welfare. Do you have even one statistic, one fact to back up that claim? I'll give you a little hint: It's TINY as a percentage of the budget and arguably at least goes towards people who are producing something.

OK, not really sure how to respond to what you said Messy Buu, because I don't understand what you are trying to say. So I will just say this. There are A LOT of HS dropouts who lead, what is commonly considered to be, successful lives.

"I've never met an intelligent high school drop out."

So every time you meet someone who you consider to be intelligent, you ask them if they graduated from HS? No, of course not.

I think I met a few intelligent highschool drop outs. I would have to agree with Abe. If someone is intelligent I wouldn't ask if they were a highschool drop out. Nevertheless I do know of some highschool drop outs who made it by working.


I have heard the idea of not allowing people who are on welfare to have children anymore until they get off if it, but it is not really piratical.

More likely than not, those females who have 2 children had them before they were on welfare. If not that scenario, then she might find herself in more trouble from contracting a disease from having free sex without worry of getting pregnant.

If not that scenario, you will have people who will NOT apply for aid and not fee their children or do criminal activities.

If not THAT scenario, then you find yourself by process of elimination targeting minorities to not have children because they are poor (I am sure there are many statistics about who the majority of poor people are in the US)


If not that, then... well I'll stop here.

The idea of public assistance really is that we save as much as we can from the situation. If we pay for some of those 'lazy people' maybe their children will be productive. If we give them a chance (the parents and the children) maybe will will get something out of it. The most basic thing we get out of it is that these people have something (and therefore stay away from crime), also, by giving food, housing and money, they are able to live at a higher standard. They go to work and produce more, spend more.

Also by taking care of them it lessens the chance of diseases being spread do to lack of food, doctor care, self care; also, violence related crimes (you have and I want it), sexual deviancy (sex is the great drug to forget your cares), drug use and others because they are getting a minimum living standard.

Honestly, if we are not paying this way, we will pay in other ways.


Oh and honestly, where does the idea of being on welfare means your unintellegent, lazy, or just a plain slacker? I have met people who just wanted to 'get by' or be on welfare and like it, but it is a very few. Most do not like it, or how they are treated, or the way people speak to them, or being on a 'allowance'.

The real answer is workfare AND education not contraception.

Actually Draginol, you are aware of the current trade problems between the US and the EU. One of the major stickling blocks is the illegal tax conxessions the US gives to it's companies. This definitely counts as corporate welfare and is estimated at nearly 40 billion US dollars a year worldwide. That's NOT tiny.

In general though I do agree that some method of encouraging or even forcing people out of welfare (forcing them to get off there arses, not punishing them for trying and failing) would be good. In Europe we have much much higher levels of welfare and it can be a major problem. Not alone can single mothers spend the rest of their lives on welfare they also get free houses. There is no incentive for them ever to go back to work and no balancing between the needs of their children for a parent at home versus the needs for society not to be lumbered with huge tax bills. I personally would support a form of contraceptive for welfare recipients and students, so long as it's applied fairly (male and female alike) and leaves no long term medical issues. I would also support much better welfare support than that you're currently complaining about though!

Paul.

"Honestly, if we are not paying this way, we will pay in other ways."--joetheblow

Very true, and a fact that is often forgotten.

If someone drop out of high school because it's too easy for them, however intelligent they think they are, they are lacking in common sense, foresight and discipline.

I was in the accelerated track for my high school for english, math, science and social studies. I took Spanish for all 4 years (and had studied for a year before in eighth grade), and every single year of Spanish failed to challenge me because the teachers had to hold back the classes for the lowest common denominator. There was a small group of us who were taking Spanish because we loved it and we learned a lot on our own. But even Spanish 5, which was supposed to prepare us for the Advanced Placement Spanish test didn't challenge us. If I had had to take all of my other non-elective courses as the non-accelerated classes, I would have gone insane. The accelerated track was hard, but I knew that it would pay off. It did. I placed out of a whole semester of credit at Lawrence Tech and got a scholarship that paid for all of my classes, minus book and lab fees.

My point is, if you're not being challenged at school, you need to challenge yourself. If you can't have the self-discipline to make it through high school, you're just going to keep on having problems the rest of your life, and you're going to keep blaming other people and circumstances supposedly outside of your controll. If you can't rely on yourself, who can you rely on? And if you give up, you might as well give up breathing, because you're already dead.

"If someone drop out of high school because it's too easy for them, however intelligent they think they are, they are lacking in common sense, foresight and discipline."--CariElf

How so? You are making an awful lot of assumptions.

"My point is, if you're not being challenged at school, you need to challenge yourself."

Why do you assume that the intelligent ones don't do exactly that?

"If you can't have the self-discipline to make it through high school"

Why do you assume that it is lack of self-discipline that causes them to drop out?

What do "intelligent" people accomplish by doing nothing? By the way, if I go: "Man everything's too easy for me, so I'm not going to do anything, because it's not challenging." does that sound more like I'm super intelligent or I'm just lazy?

Where does this assumption of doing nothing come from? How does dropping out of HS mean that you are lazy or lack self-discipline and will do nothing with the rest of your life? Like I said earlier, some HS dropouts are very intelligent and have achieved what most would define as "success".

"Man everything's too easy for me, so I'm not going to do anything, because it's not challenging." does that sound more like I'm super intelligent..."

No it doesn't, and I never made that claim did I?

"I've never met an intelligent high school drop out. And the statistics on poverty certainly don't help their case either."

Would you consider me intelligent? Er, wait - that might be a loaded question.

I'm a HS dropout. I don't deny it. I suppose I didn't drop out of HS for the same reason most people do though. Why did I drop out? Because HS -was- boring the hell out of me, and even though I was in the so called "advanced" classes they were still teaching me the EXACT same things I'd been learning for the past three years.

So, I dropped out - and got my GED and went to college. Same year.

Yes, I dropped out of HS so that I could go to college.

No, the claim is that intelligent people drop out of high school for a good reason, but I have yet to hear of a good reason.

Good reasons to drop out of HS:

1. You aren't learning anything. Perhaps you go to a school where there are no advanced or AP courses.
2. You know that your time could be better spent doing something else. For example, traveling, taking college courses, earning money for something you consider to be important, volunteering etc.

1) Transfer to a school that has advanced or AP courses. What if they aren't learning anything in college? Do they then drop out of college and go to work? What if they learn nothing there? Quit and retire?
2) If high school is so easy for them, then they could do those things (including taking college courses as I did when I was in high school) while still in high school. Besides, if it's so easy for them, they can graduate in their junior year.

It sounds like plain ol' laziness to me.