Social Security Part 3 continued

Part of the Preamble discussed the need to take care of aged, crippled children, blind, child welfare, and unemployment compensation. Pretty much everything that is anathema to the Republican party, well at least that is the way the Democrats feel about it.

And a side note question here, why just the blind, what about the deaf or other disabilities. Who knows right now, the times were different then.

And like the medical aspect (which led to Medicare and Medicaid) these programs are a cost to the government. Okay Medicaid is, technically your salary is contributing to you having Medicare.

We need to look at the big picture though. Since we accept we live in a society where people can make money we have to understand there will be so called winners and losers. Much as we want it to happen, not everyone can be the richest person on the planet. And that is okay as long as we also realize if we allow for people to be successful there will be others that have a need. The goal then is to allow for both; people to be successful without leaving anyone behind. The immediate example of this would be unemployment compensation for people who might be laid off due to a company struggling etc.

Why should the workers be hurt because management either mismanaged the business or the industry or times are changing and the company is losing business?  People should be allowed to continue with their lives. Yet is just giving them checks for 6 months the answer. Sometimes it might be. Many workers or even managers may be able to find jobs within that time frame. Other times they may not be able. So what happens when they cannot find a job within 6 months, does the government keep extending benefits like what happened post the 2008 recession? At what point do they stop?

This is where there has to be a transition plan, not just help. If we believe that all people are created equal then we need to make sure all have equal opportunity, but this should never be an ongoing cost to the people via the taxes we pay to the government.

So now look at the big picture of all welfare programs. One criticism my so called conservative brethren say is that we can’t hand out entitlements all the time. The “other side” create programs that help people such as food stamps, but it creates a need to continue on food stamps if you do not help people move on in life. And this has created what is now being called generational welfare. Children growing up with this expectation in their lives and no one willing to step in and help them learn to be self-sufficient.

Last week there was an article by Rachel Sheffield about Kansas and Maine creating work requirements to get food stamps found on a site called CNSNEWS. And I do know you always have to be careful about news sources nowadays since so many are so biased they mix facts/news with opinion very liberally. Yet if the statistics mentioned in the article are even somewhat close to real fact then this is a good example of what I am looking to get people to understand. Quoting from their example from Maine: “Within the first three months after Maine’s work policy went into effect, its caseload of able-bodied adults receiving food stamps plunged by 80 percent, falling from 13.332 recipients in December 2014 to 2678 in March 2015.” Honestly this is a very large decrease in a short amount of time so I wonder if there were other factors involved. Finding ways to institute more of this to see if it could be duplicated would have benefited the premise of the article. Only two states were mentioned and one was Kansas which right now I would be dubious of any facts coming from the Right in Kansas right now. So why do I quote from this article.  One reason is because they mention something I do feel is needed and that is work programs provide opportunities such as job training and employment search services. These would have to be mandatory for any work program to reduce welfare to be successful.

In implementing the work programs though I feel there will be a need to increase spending at first. One business axiom is you need to spend money to make money. In my opinion it works backwards in the welfare situation using work programs. You are going to need to spend money to save money/reduce the budget in the long run. The trade-off being once people are able to remove themselves from food stamps and welfare they become tax payers hence reducing the cost while increasing revenue. The key is you are going to have to really make the commitment to the job training and other education aspects including basics like teaching people how to manage money, run a budget, and make proactive health decisions. People who have grown up on welfare do not have the education level, not just of high school etc, but off making healthy life decisions some of us take for granted.

It sounds so basic to some of us about eating healthy and seeing a doctor regularly. Many on welfare have never been given the opportunity to plan ahead or even understand what it means to save. Some of us take for granted to do comparison shopping or know how to make informed shopping decisions. Welfare recipients, especially generational recipients, by and large have no idea what we do on a daily basis.

Also we would actually need to raise food stamp levels and at the same time limit what can be bought with food stamps. The problem poor people and apparently my conservative brethren do not see is eating healthy takes more money and time. And yet if they can be taught better nutrition they end up having less medical costs. Hate to be a food big brother, yet it is not against the concept of helping people if we lead them in a better direction. It is taxpayers’ money we are using for welfare so using it wisely for the government budget and more importantly for the recipients is the right thing to do. I hate using the word entitlement because the right wing throws it around as a four letter word, but when the government is helping people through welfare programs current recipients tend to take advantage of the system. Holding them accountable for their actions is a reasonable criterion to receiving benefits.  This leads me back to the article I mentioned. How do we make this an actual reality throughout the country?

This is one primary goal. Welfare should be temporary. And at the same time we have to accept it is going to be needed. In a system that relies on a division of wealth, there will be poor people. They are not inherently bad because they are poor so we need to make sure they retain their dignity. Helping them get back on their feet with what is now called welfare should be the primary goal. We should not expect this to be the answer for them though.

The next item is we help those who cannot help themselves. This is where the Medicaid disability help comes into play. Sometimes the cost of taking care of someone or the mental illness issues of someone are so extreme that a family or even extended family cannot take care of the person by themselves. It is not a burden to the taxpayers via the government to have programs to help families in these situations. As a people who believe in the dignity of life it does become our responsibility to have programs in place either directly from the government or the government supporting programs for these people.  We all contribute either through taxes or the current social security payments to support this need.  And we need to make sure we understand the problems so we give the proper care. When you deny people this support you are taking a step backwards in social evolution. Bad things can happen and it is no one’s fault so we cannot judge a person with a disability as someone less than us. We create better judgment for ourselves when we help them.

And going back to my original ideas of helping the retirement aspect of social security we do need to start consolidating the various acts, government procedures, the number of departments involved etc so we can better utilize the money for the people who need it. This is whether it is work programs; food and medical for children; disability, programs that help those with disabilities participate in society where they can; high school, trade school, or other education to help people become better prepared for jobs (and we can support people being trained in jobs that are needed and this does not take away anyone’s rights); and even life education for people who especially now have spent a lifetime on welfare learning how to take care of themselves, their money and their health. 

These are just some ideas to show you what can be done to turn the current welfare situation into a more manageable service program that benefits the recipient and society at large.  

Going back to the preamble, does this all need to fall under the social security administration? Maybe. We do need as mentioned above really sit down and define what help we can and should give and consolidate the bureaucracies to better manage the programs, learn what works and what doesn’t (being flexible is a good thing), keep costs down, and a better understanding of who we are as a people.