h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

[z]

This is an issue I have strong and not entirely logical feelings about.

*waves hello to Edward and drops a calling card as she has mixed feelings about social welfare and such*

[Hati]

I have a strong objection to certain abusres of the welfare system in the US. I *hated* being on unemployment last year, and that was an insurance program that I paid in to. I just know of an entire complex of welfare families where not one person living there has an actual job. Being unable to work is one thing, but refusing to work is entirely another. One woman I know has six kids, is perfectly able bodied, has free child care available to her but refuses to work.

I know that I don't have the answers, but I wish that more people would look at the problem.

There are 2 reasons for why I am on social welfare: A and C. If I did not have them, I would not have even applied. When it is used correctly, as I hope I am doing, it is a good thing. I could not afford to go back to school without social welfare and I cannot better my financial situation without going back to school.

I grew up on Social Security and now I'm at Medical School, if it wasn't for welfare I would have left school as soon as I could and be working in whatever job I could find to support my family.

I think we are always going to either have:

Some people who will abuse the system

OR

Some people who will starve to death.

I know which I'd rather have.

The following is something I sent to someone and the further along I wrote the more I was upset with our own system. As was said there are those who abuse the system and then there are those who don't even know how to use the system and end up on the wrong end of the stick. The first part I was explaining our sick time system which led to the second part about homeless.

Here we accumulate sick time and vacation time. We earn so many hours of sick & vacation time each month. However we now can only save a maximum of 520 sick hours and can only carry over 80 hours of vacation time. I haven't used too much of vacation time so unless I start using the vacation time I will have over 160 hours come July first. I would lose any thing over 80 hours. So I have scheduled at least ten days for March, April, May and June. The company does not want me to lose any of my vacation and so will persistantly remind me to be sure and use them before the cutoff date. As for the sick days. Not too many of us have an excess of sick days. The problem here is if you do not have sick days then you have to use your vacation days. If you run out of that then there is no pay unless it has been because of an extended sickness where the insurance would kick in and pay you partial wages. But if we have used up all our sick pay from frequent illnesses, this include immediate family, and if we used up our vacation then if we are sick there is no coverage. Also this could get a person discharged. By being discharged I do not mean laid off. We are fired for excess usage of sick time.

>>"This is how we develope our homeless population. These are people that have lost their jobs, cannot afford rent, who seek shelter under bridges, in doorways, or at charitable hospices if they have room. They get their food from the same charities or whatever dumpster they can find food in that is not being already claimed by another homeless person. Our homeless is a mixed bag of people of skills, people of hardly any skills and people with psychological problems."<< I worked as security for several years for a mental health office. The caseworkers often found themselves in precarious situations where if the client were to go off the staff could be harmed or worse. As security officer I too faced that same problem. But I read a paper on the ten things a person can do to difuse a situation. The security person before me was always getting into it with the clients. This time in my life I was very proud of my self. I never got into it with these people. I made eye contact. I did not invade their space. I did not back off if they invaded my space. And I never got angry. I have been threatened but never harmed. I managed to remove clients from places they had no business being at. If it wasn't for the pay I would have liked to have stayed. But I like what I do now and it pays better and has better benefits. For a while I did both jobs but that didn't give me time for my family.

Wow... looks like I inadvertantly started a big debate thing.

Mrs. D says 'hi' but is unable to post at the mo' for various reasons.

[fg]

'Cos you're hogging the pc, Mr D?

I'm only here because Wee G's gone out for the evening. I usually have to resort to theats, bribes and viscious crowbar action to get him off ours.

<>

Take it from one who knows: it really isn't that easy to stay on Jobseeker's Allowance (i.e. welfare) for long in Britain. After a few months you get the choice of doing a full-time training course, which can last up to six months, or losing your money. I'm getting reasonably lenient treatment at present because I have happily done the training courses and am demonstrably trying to better myself by going to University, but I still have to show documentary evidence of actually looking for jobs.

I've actually just applied for a part-time gig as an administrator at the Bradford University sports centre. If successful, this would put me in the interesting position of being a part-time staff member and part-time student at the same institution.

[Hyp]

In my experience a teenager does not need the promise of free housing to have sex, and babies come from sex not from promises of free housing. I think we tend to confuse "incentives" with a lack of disincentives, but that's not necessarily true; they are entirely separate issues.

And I certainly hope I have used my semicolon properly there. I've decided, after two days of thinking about it, that I have more of a problem with the use of "however" as an adjective than I do with semicolons. In my opinion it has migrated to conjunction.

Lessee... Hope Marv is feeling better. Whiplash really is an issue, and you'll regret it if you don't get it looked after. I still have problems today, five years later.

Hippo Birdie Two to Joanna.

Hello to Beeblefish and Edward the Bonobo - relax and enjoy.

{Courtesy}

Lil, we have a plethora of Mexican-American unwed young mothers here in SoCal. The group here that avoids it more than any other are the various Asian ethnicities. Which may well point to your cultural theory being correct.

That said, I don't know if we can boil it all down to race/ethnicity. Certainly, racial and ethnic issues surround the options and choices, and you can't really extract them from economic issues. But I've known black women that didn't have children at 15, and white women who did. Same can be said for almost every ethnicity/race group. I think it's more a matter of opportunity. The more economically disadvantaged a group is, the more the opportunities for escaping poverty are diminished, and the more likely a high percentage of teen pregnancies will occur. In Florida, the Hispanic population is largely of Cuban extraction, yes? And Cuban Americans are by and large legal immigrants, as opposed the large number of illegals here in SoCal. Illegality leads to low wages and missing opportunity...

Hmmm. If I was more of a sociologist/modern American historian, this would make an interesting dissertation topic.

Little late to be changing your major isn't it MR

Well, yes, there is that.

*raises eyebrow* Fascinating.

[GDZ]