Welfare has been reformed greatly. You pretty much have to be a single parent with dependent children to get it and you can only stay on for three years. There are other forms of public housing assistance that people refer to as "welfare", but the core welfare programs got tightened up quite a bit in the 90's. Too expensive, require transportation, and it makes them congregate together into a "community" of poor folks which makes other problems worse. We should just tighten up food assistance programs to prevent them from buying luxury items or name brands when good quality generics are available. This was addresed somewhat in the 90's with the "term limits". Again, congregation of poor people into dense housing creates tons of other problems from crime, to drugs, to disease. Public housing assistance needs to reward those trying to move up and out of the system. Fewer "project" apartment blocks and more "Katrina cottage" rental homes, widely separated, onto vacant blocks in working class neighborhoods. Nothing very big or very fancy, but compatible with the working neighborhood and encouraging them to move up and into buying affordable "habitat for humanity" sponsored housing themselves. In this fashion the problem becomes smaller as time goes by and solves other problems as well.
Haven't these programs failed in the past? Don't they just drive out the wealthy & create more "poor" areas?
Not really. They are doing this in Old South Baton Rouge and it is working out well. They are demolishing the gulag-type brick apartment projects which were expensive to maintain and were crime ridden centers of everything bad. Now they are building inexpensive small cottages which are both cheaper and can be built quickly and even moved if necessary. They haven't built them into the Country Club of Louisiana, they build them in their same familiar neighborhoods, just not concentrating them together. It's a low-income neighborhood, but mostly inhabited by working people. Using abandoned lots instead of letting them grow up in weeds is good for the community and doesn't concentrate the poorest into welfare ghettos. It encourages them to live more like their working neighbors instead of putting them into hopeless "projects" with no ladder out.
what evidence is there that welfare is in need of reform? healthcare is a mess. obviously it is getting its due attention. why is there all this attention on welfare but not on farm subsidies?
So how do you propose we fix the soon-to-be-skyrocketing crime problem? You ready to see your homeowners and auto insurance rise to compensate for burglaries and auto thefts? You ready to pay more taxes to build new prisons?
You didn't read the second part of my post. Give a reason to the people of those neighborhoods, towns, cities to actually give to a good cause and get a decent tax break for doing so. Win-Win
I'm not exactly sure how people with disposable income giving to charity is going to do anything about all of the angry poor (lazy) people breaking into your house to steal your money since they don't have welfare any more. Don't get me wrong, I hate the very idea that welfare exists. I can't really think of a way to get rid of it without causing a riot though. Giving people stuff for free for as long as we have creates a sense of entitlement and taking it away all of a sudden would be devastating. Could you imagine the panic if all of those people simultaneously realized that they were going to have to start working?
My point was that private charities, churches, foundations will have to begin to support the people that were stuck on welfare and depended on it. I'm well aware of the immediate consequences but like a band aid you don't slow rip it you just yank that SOB off. The quicker we rid the problem the quicker we are to a solution.
Why would they "have" to do this? Especially with the self-proclaimed selfish not about to pay anything for anybody but themselves.
Maybe have was the wrong choice of words but I think they do it already so why wouldn't they do it some more with more donation money? Nothing I said has been selfish. I have no problem giving money to a cause that I believe in and not run by a bunch of govt. morons. I actually believe in the goodness of people's hearts will far outweigh the taxation requirements by federal govt. crap. Unlike others.
