The system and its players

Old NFO (see the sidebar for a link) wrote a blog entry about a conversation he overheard while on a flight back to DC. The lady seated behind him was bragging about the ways she is scamming the system to the tune of about $4,000 a month. He describes the conversation much better than I can and just thinking about what the lady is doing makes me angry.

I know more than a few people who have been on welfare of one form or another and in fact I have collected unemployment after losing a job because I was too old for my boss to tolerate. From experience I know there are people who will game the system just because it’s there but I also know that there are lots more people who believe in the system and try to live up to the rules and regulations. Unfortunately, just as there is 47% of the population that pays no income tax at all I think that much of that population is also abusing the welfare system.

From my perspective the system is broken because the welfare industry and the politicians who enable them want a significant part (if not a majority) of the population to be dependant on the government and who are a dependable pool of tame voters…at least for as long as the politicians maintain a political system that lets people vote the political class into office.

Perhaps indicative of the “state of the system” is a comment I read recently where the writer was approached as he walked towards a supermarket and asked if he wanted to buy $50 worth of food stamps for $30 and was told when he declined and tried to give the young lady $5 that “That isn’t anywhere near enough”. The implication of that public (and illegal) act and the public perception that cheating the system is ok disturbs me, and short of creating forced labor pools from the ranks of welfare recipients I can see no solution to the problem of welfare cheating.

Helping members of society that have hit a rough spot in life is a critical and essential part of our social heritage but I think the time has come for us to reevaluated the current welfare model and require those in receipt of benefits to not only contribute back to the labor pool but also pay (however little) taxes on the benefits received and income earned. Zero income; pay no taxes…anything more than that and you owe taxes.