War on Sanity Truths, Lies, Conspiracy Theories or What?

Over here (Uruguay), welfare hasn't gotten to the point where it can afford someone what you describe.

You know what happens? They do "work", in a sense, but not the kind of work we'd want them to have: families have chariots (litterally, with horses pulling them), and go scrounging around the trash cans. They are now supposedly authorized by the government (after some tense protests), there are an estimate of 50.000 of them (Image: http://www.180.com.uy/tmp/thumbs/a93c0188583eb74b25d3814529e88b28.jpg [180.com.uy] ), they live by classifying the refuse, trying to separate metals and cardboard and plastics.

And those are the ones that do work. There's also another kind, who send their children to board buses and ask for charity, or to ask for money at the street lights (basically every significant street light has its beggars). Children are beaten if they don't fill the "quota" set by their parents. And they do get enough money, more than what's usual for a day's works at minimum wage.

Other people "work" as "car minders" (?).. they stay at the block where you park, and ask for money in return for "caring" for your car (and god help you if you don't pay them..). Don't think that just by paying them they won't steal if they have the opportunity (I've personally seen the one in my block steal, and now I'm in a kind of cold war with him, and can't park in my block anymore), and they're no insurance against having your car stolen either.

In all, the "refuse classifiers" (the guys on chariots) at least try to do something. Though the municipal government complains that they make the trash cleaning job a lot worse, because they leave a mess behind after they go through the trash cans.

I don't know exactly how the social programs in the U.K. work, but I do know the ones in the U.S. are practically perfectly designed to make absolutely certain that once a person is in the system, they won't get back out. Just as soon as someone shows signs that they might get back on their feet they hit the program limits and end up worse off than when they were unemployed. To show the extent of the problem, just having $300 in the bank is enough to get services terminated, even if it was a one-off windfall or an attempt to save for a car so you can get work.

The people who get out are the ones who just had a spell of the worst sort of luck and were then able to resume working for considerably more than minimum wage. If you expect the worst of people, then punish them for doing anything but the worst, it's not hard to guess what will happen.

Put another way, how many people of ANY social class will be inclined to work more in order to have less? Or even to just stay where they are? I don't think very many would.

Meanwhile, many HR departments are not terribly interested in a 30 or 40 year old with a family applying for an entry level position. That is, a person who did exactly what society said they should and improved their education to get out of a dead end situation then finds that the window has closed.