Quote:
Originally Posted by Conan
There will always be those who abuse a system, but if, according to your own words, those who abuse welfare are in the minority of those who use it responsibly, why should you make it more difficult for those who genuinely need it to obtain/hold onto those benefits? You're punishing many for the acts of a few.
I don't know the percentage of people who genuinely need welfare vs. those who could do without. It's a tough thing to gauge considering all of the factors involved. But to me, the benefits of the current system far outweigh the faults -- and if there were one person genuinely in need to 10 who weren't, I'd still advocate the current system or an even easier one.
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Ensuring the system works as intended has absolutely no negative side effect, unless the system is aimed at ensuring its own abuse. You hurt no one by ensuring that only the people who legitimately need a service are the ones able to access that service.
It's not about making it harder for legitimate needs to be met. It's about making it harder for illegitimate needs to be met.
One of the big problems is that it's very hard to determine who's abusing the system and who's not. Short of monitoring purchases made with EBT, the tax-payer-funded money is simply "trusted" to those who apply and qualify, and that's even if they were honest about their income to begin with.
Due to this, there can't be any effective statistics drawn from who is using the system as intended and who is not. This creates a situation where you either "hope" everyone is using the service legitimately, or simply put in place a system that ensures it.
Since the system is meant for legitimate use, resisting efforts to ensure that it cannot be used illegitimately is basically pushing for a government sponsored, tax-payer funded free "whatever you want" program. Given the options of providing food to the needy, versus providing funds to the irresponsible or dishonest, I'm sorry, but I gotta go with the former.