Re: Hey, a Big Thanks to Neil!

[Guest guest]

Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 12:46 PM

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> > Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 9:20 PM

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> > > Most Republicans are compassionate about the poor, it's just that the

> > > belief is that the compassion is not measured by how many poor people

we

> > > give money to but rather by how many poor people we empower to no

longer

> > > need government money.

> >

> > Exactly. It's that " give a man a fish " vs. " teach a man to fish "

> > philosophy.

>

> Well, let me give my two cents on the issue as a long-term poor person.

>

> My government says the same things as you say above. They say they want to

> encourage poor people to get jobs. There are, however, some problems with

> this statement.

>

> 1) Dental care is not covered under provincial medical insurance or

> covered by welfare. The only thing that is covered is tooth removal.

> Therefore, a poor person with bad teeth can't be helped, and is likely to

> suffer in the job market compared to someone who can afford dental care.

>

> 2) Welfare does not even cover basic groceries. How can a person who is

> starving, who has no energy, have the stamina to look for work? (no, we

> don't have food stamps. We have food banks, but they have such high demand

> on them, single people can't get food from them.)

>

> 3) Welfare does not cover the cost of a telephone. How can one get call

> backs for jobs when they don't have telephones?

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> 4) Welfare will not cover daycare. How can a single parent look for work

> when they have no one to care for their children?

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> 5) A person on welfare cannot afford a professional resume service or even

> a computer (unless they had one before becoming unemployed.) They cannot

> afford decent clothes for a job interview. They cannot afford public

> transportation (and you're not allowed to own a car if you're on welfare;

> you have to sell it before you can get welfare.) It is very difficult to

> go out job-hunting or attend interviews without a resume, decent clothes

> or transportation.

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> 6) Many people are on welfare because they don't have the skills needed to

> look for work, let alone get a job. But the government has denied funding

> to every single job training and job re-entry program in the province,

> including the program that helped me to get a job. This includes services

> to people with disabilities. I once had a job counsellor who specialized

> in working with people who are on the spectrum. Her job is now gone.

>

> This does not sound like " compassion " to me.

>

> Iris

Yep...those are all the things that have always been wrong with traditional

welfare systems. There are plans afoot here in the US to address the issues

you mentioned that are not already being addressed. Maybe eventually the US

welfare system will become what it was meant to be in the first place...a

system to support people while they get back on their feet.

I do understand that there are people who will never be capable of being

self-supporting, but a lot of the people who who are trapped in the welfare

system would be able to end their dependency on it if only the barriers you

listed above were removed.

When I worked for an orthodontist, one of our patients was a single mother

with two kids. She was taking advantage of the publicly funded childcare

and tuition assistance programs in our area to go to school to be a

paralegal. The last time I saw her she had just graduated and had several

job offers.