Assistance=Laziness?

[Thumper]

Caught part of a story on the radio last night. One of the interviewee's points was that assistance, any kind of governmental help, turns people into lazy bums. Now I don't want to get into a wider discussion that some of the same people who rail against food stamps and welfare are the same ones that lobby for increased import tariffs, and huge governmental industrial oil and agricultural subsidies. Take it down to the personal level: What do you do when you receive help?
I'm usually inclined not to ask for help. I should ask more. People are willing to help me and together we can get more done. When people do help me, I feel grateful. I want to be worthy of their help. I want to prove to them that they are helping a good worthwhile cause. Often, I will end up helping them on a project. I usually ply them with beverages and often take them out to dinner or lunch. Together, we get more projects done, and have a good time.
It doesn't make me feel like a lazy bum.

[geonuc]

I think people helping each other is great thing. For me, I normally don't ask for help but then I'm pretty anti-social and don't really have a need for help.

The government assistance = lazy bum thing is bullshit.

[Swift]

I haven't asked for help in the sense they are talking about (welfare, food stamps) and haven't been that poor since my grad school and post-doc days. I didn't receive any government assistance back, other than things like my salary and tuition reimbursement. I certainly worked hard for those.

My dad was on Social Security disability for a time, but not because he was lazy, but because he had health problems.

I've heard the "assistance makes people lazy" meme for decades from conservatives. I'm sure there are individuals for which this is true, but have seen no actual evidence of it beyond the individual level. Frankly, I think they believe it because they want to believe it. They don't want to help people, and it is much easier to blame the victim, rather than fix the societal problems that lead to poverty. Much easier to ignore pleas for help if you can dismiss them with "well, they're just lazy".

Often lost in the discussion on this issue is the fact that the majority of people who receive that kind of assistance are the working poor or are children (and usually children of the working poor). If you don't require businesses to pay people a living wage, how do expect them to live?

[SciFi Chick]

I don't know which is worse:

The idea that people sincerely believe this, and as a result, society suffers.

Or the idea that it's a conspiracy by the wealthy to keep people down.

Both are terrible, and I think only one can be true.

[Thumper]

I agree with you three pretty much about poverty, governmental assistance, and the like. I just thought I'd explore it down to the individual level. If the government assisting me makes me lazy, does any assistance make me lazy. If I'm inclined to stop doing things if the gov't gives it to me or pays me, am I inclined to do the same if my buddies help me? If Dave and Bud come over on a Saturday to help me fall and buck up a tree, will I ask them to come over and do it again and not help as much, and get the the point where they have to do all my chores while I sit around? I guess it was just my silly way to explore the absolute stupidity of the argument.

On a larger scale I'm afraid there's a racist component to this that makes me sick. Back shortly after Katrina there was also a major blizzard in North Dakota. A friend forwarded me a crap email that in North Dakota, the schools stayed open, there was no looting, people kept working, didn't need any help, yada yada as opposed to horrors in Louisiana. I went nuts and went off on him. Starting with the complete differences in the nature of the disaster, like in ND hundreds of thousands of people weren't immediately homeless. After explaining all that, then the difference in the nature of the relief that came to both. Then that ND would always be very short term event and how people still can't recover from Katrina. I ended with the fact that ND's governor, who had spouted in the past about keeping the big invasive fed gov't off their backs was pleading for federal assistance in the wake of the disaster.

The next time I saw him I dropped the boom on him that the entire post was patently racist. The difference it was trying to say was that many of the LA people were black, almost all the ND people were white. Almost lost the friendship over it. But he never forwarded me a crap email ever again....

[SciFiFisher]

Unfortunately, there is some truth to the meme that if you give assistance to people some of them will take advantage of it. How much depends on whose numbers you use. The fact that people take advantage of the system tacitly or through outright fraud is part of the price of doing business so to speak. The goal is to create a balance that weeds out the majority of the fraud and abuse without making it too difficult for those who are truly needy to access the system and receive the help they need.

A slight stereotype seems to occur in which the conservative approach is to assume that a large number of people are committing fraud and abuse. And that if you offer people help you simply create dependence from which individuals will never want to leave the system. The classic example was a young woman I met in college who was on her 7th Voc-Tech 2 year program and her 6th child. She proudly bragged about changing her *major* every time she was one quarter away from graduating so the state would have to allow her to continue to receive state assistance without getting a job. She also bragged about winning every appeal when the state tried to curtail her activities because the administrative law judge agreed with her that she had not achieved a vocational degree that would make her employable. She also was quite pleased with herself that everytime she wanted a raise in her public assistance she would just find some willing schmuck and have another baby.

Given this example and others that I am personally aware of it would be easy to assume that the conservative belief is the correct one.

The opposite stereotype occurs in the liberal camp. The assumption is that the percentage of people who commit fraud and who become dependent on the system are low and well within an acceptable percentage. I.e. the cost of fraud vs reasonable access to the system is fine with them. In fact, they believe we should create larger stipends and better incentives. Some of those seem to make sense. Such as a system that actually pays a living wage for meaningful and productive work. Or keeping daycare incentives so that low income families can *afford* to work. There are studies that seem to suggest that the government would get more bang for the buck if they would spend more money on things like daycare support and rent controls vs straight up cash incentives to stay home.

The challenge is that neither side seems to want to hold individuals accountable. For example, the young lady I mentioned was apparently not committing fraud. Yet, the system was not designed to prevent the obvious abuse she was committing. In fact, when individual social workers tried to prevent this abuse they were chastised and shot down by the administrative law judges who obviously were blind to the obvious waste of tax payer money and/or believed that the rules would not allow them to hold her accountable.

[Thumper]

I guess I'm partial to the "cost of doing business" aspect to some degree. If I end up with a "welfare mom" with a $500 pedicure and a new Cadillac but am able to provide 1000 needy kids their only chance at a healthy meal, so be it. But I also agree about holding individuals accountable. I just don't know how you do that. I assume, (or hope to) that the vast majority of people want to be productive, contributing members of society if given the chance.

[SciFiFisher]

Thumper, I think you hit the nail on the head. No one seems to know how to create a set of standards that are acceptable to almost everyone for holding people accountable in practically any venue. Let alone in the public assistance arena.

I tend towards the belief that fraud and abuse occurs at a level that we need some checks in place to catch it and punish it. But, that we should not make the system so difficult that a large percentage of the people we are trying to help are denied assistance.

Sadly, IMO there is a belief in a large segment of the population that fraud, abuse, and favoritism are so rampant in the welfare system that it should be totally abolished.

[Thumper]

I tend towards the belief that fraud and abuse occurs at a level that we need some checks in place to catch it and punish it. But, that we should not make the system so difficult that a large percentage of the people we are trying to help are denied assistance.

The problem with this is that it makes way too much sense and would make crappy sound bites or Buzz words for a politician.

[Swift]

I tend towards the belief that fraud and abuse occurs at a level that we need some checks in place to catch it and punish it. But, that we should not make the system so difficult that a large percentage of the people we are trying to help are denied assistance.

The problem with this is that it makes way too much sense and would make crappy sound bites or Buzz words for a politician.

Yes

[SciFiFisher]

I tend towards the belief that fraud and abuse occurs at a level that we need some checks in place to catch it and punish it. But, that we should not make the system so difficult that a large percentage of the people we are trying to help are denied assistance.

The problem with this is that it makes way too much sense and would make crappy sound bites or Buzz words for a politician.

Yes

Well, that could explain (partially) why I am not a politician.