To all fans of mediocrity, Just a bit of a reality check on what you guys appear to be talking about. "Welfare" is virtually unavailable to single lazy males. There are no federal programs and I doubt if there any state programs aimed at this group. The biggest federal "welfare" program is Social Security. It covers in addition to the elderly, those with disabilities. This can include lazy males but their numbers are relatively low as it is very difficult to qualify for these programs.
The federal programs most commonly referred to as "welfare" include Food Stamps and Aid to Families with Dependant Children. As the name implies AFDC is not available to lazy single women either unless they have children. These funds are not provided to assist slothful parents. They are provided to make sure that our youngest citizens do not go to sleep at night hungry in the streets. The average woman receiving these funds has about two small children. Food Stamps are awarded on the basis of income. These funds can only be used directly for food and while recipient can buy expensive cuts of meat they can't buy many of them. Reagan once offered up an example of a Cadillac welfare mom signing up dead relatives and making $150,000 per year. Like so much of Reagan thinking this was fantasy. There was no such woman. Lazy freeloaders, the ones Platt thinks have their hand in his pockets, receive very little in direct aid. They are general entitled to stay in emergency shelters which, at least in the south, typically limit them to 14 days every six months. The rest of the time they live on the street. They can receive daily meals at soup kitchens. This generally provides a pretty subsistence diet. Life on the street is no picnic. Everything you own you have to carry with you which is not much of a problem because if you set it down or fall asleep it is likely to get stolen. Then you don't have to worry about carrying it. If you decided you wanted to get a job few places other than day labor outfits will hire you if you have no address. The biggest taxpayer expense for the individuals Platt thinks are typical comes through emergency room visits. The very poor are forced to seek the health care through emergency rooms because that it the only place they can go. Because they live on the street and because they lead a fairly disgusting lifestyle they are subject to all manner of disease and violence. In Athens, Ga. a homeless shelter tracked 900 clients' access to health care in the local hospital. They found that these individual accounted for 700 ambulance trips and more than 2000 hospital visits. The total cost to the community: $27,000,000. The Department of Housing and Urban Development just released the first federal report on homelessness: http://www.huduser.org/Publications/pdf/ahar.pdf The one of the statistics they used was a count of the number of homeless people on a single day in January 2005. They reported about 400,000 homeless people using shelters or transitional housing and about another 350,000 people who were not accessing services. Thus they indicate that on any given day there are about 750,000 homeless persons in the United States. They also suggest that based on rough estimates from the past this number has not change much over the past decade. Using a different counting method they reported on person receiving shelter between Feb. 1 and April 30, 2005. They reported 704,000 individuals. Of those 242,000 were in families with children. Sorry but that's all I can come up with off the top of my head but if you want more numbers just ask. By the way Malcom Gladwell of "Blink" fame wrote an extraordinary article for the New Yorker earlier this year. I highly recommend it. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/02/13/060213fa_fact Case moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
