Additionally, you provide anyone enrolled in a Welfare financed college course with child care facilities so they can drop their kids off during class hours. Yes, this would be expensive, but within a couple of years as more people got off Welfare and into paying jobs, there would actually be a decrease in the overall spending for this program. And let's face it, you can provide all the jobs and training you want, but if you don't provide the free time to work and study, you're just dangling a carrot poor single mothers just can't reach.
And you enforce attendance by giving them exactly 2.5 years of Welfare benefits, after which time they are cut off. Period. And be hard-assed about it. Look, if people knew that they would have NOTHING unless they really applied themselves, they'd damn well do what it took to stick with the program. 2.5 years is enough time to fail a few classes along the way and still have time to find profitable employment.
For you bleeding hearts out there that think that's too tough a stance, that I'd be making poverty illegal, I would say that in fact I'm discouraging laziness while still helping those below the poverty line that are willing to help themselves.
Look, I used to work in Oakland, and I took BART to work every day. There are people that haunt those stations day in and day out. They've got a routine down pat; a horridly pitiful look, a truly heart-wrenching story to tell, or at least a semi-possible excuse why they need either
1) $2
2) $.47
3) Any spare change
Anyone that's had to put up with this can attest to these numbers or their rough equivalents. I have my theories on how they came up with "exact change" method.
Anyway, my point is, this is not a necessity for them, it's a career. They are there day in and day out, begging. Getting annoying if you try to ignore them, dishing out sarcasm if you say you have no money, getting downright rude if you refuse, and sometimes even becoming belligerent or threatening if you ask them to leave you alone. But no matter how many people steer clear of them, there are those that hand them the occasional dollar like it's a spiritual toll booth where you pay your pittance in order to feel good about yourself again. And when you add up the occasional dollar here and there, the loose change left over from getting a BART ticket, the spiritual toll charge, it adds up to more than they can make working at a burger joint or a gas station. These people are making good money by leeching off society. They are worthless wads of humanity, wastes of flesh and air and water and space.
(Hey, this is a forum for my personal opinions, ok?)
Ok, back to constructive commentary. A good friend of mine, a very intelligent lady by the name of Carolynne Ofira, suggested one other way to correct the problems Welfare and similar programs have created: create incentives for businesses to hire people enrolled in assistance programs. What a FANTASTIC idea! Rather than put the money directly into the people's hands, put it in the hands of an employer. The person hired would be gaining valuable experience and the employer would be getting an employee that, according to the general ledger, is costing the company far less than the average employee. And the person would have their foot in the door, able to move around in the company. I could go on and on about the benefits. I feel that somehow this should be worked in with the enforced college education idea to produce a system of training and employment that would generate a qualified, skilled, experienced workforce, not a segment of the population trapped in a situation where, to survive, they must necessarily be a drain on productive society.