"Are there no prisons, no poor houses?"

It's funny - I've been around poor people most of my life and I almost never see the kinds of abuse and waste that I hear about on TV and message boards.

I wonder if our poor are better than your poor, or if it's a case of both sides seeing what they want to see.

I've noted that some people abuse the system - that will happen to every system, everytime.  Always.  There are always bad people.  Don't know how to fix that problem other than a complete annihilation of the human race.  Having said that, since I don't mind the system helping people, I don't focus on the "bad" poor, I focus on the "good" poor. 

I suspect others here do the opposite.

Having said that - you want to know why we don't have more phohibitions on poor people buying booze and cigs?  Because there are profits to be made on keeping people stupid on booze and cigs and the booze and smoke lobbyists will do and say anything to make sure their sales stay consistant. 

I agree that people who abuse the system should be ashamed of theirselves. No one could argue with your personal anecdotes -- but as my college professors like to say, the plural of anecdote is not data. It is possible that you are describing 1/10 of 1% of welfare recipients and not the system as a whole. 

I know a woman who escaped from an abusive relationship with a violent alcoholic and was left with 2 small children and no job skills. She went on public assistance, and her social worker helped her get into nursing school. A few years later she had become a nurse and has been on her own two feet ever since. That's how it is supposed to work -- and in all of my anecdotes, that's how is does work.

QUOTE: She dropped out of high school and had two out-of-wedlock children. She currently works a part-time job at a restaurant and collects every form of public assistance imaginable (welfare, medicaid, food stamps, WIC, etc.)

That does sound like some irresponsibility to get to that place, Bruce, but your cousin sounds better than a lot of the women who live in my particular town.  A single mother of 2 working a job, albeit part-time?  Had she accepted the full-time position, where would she keep the kids all day (not to mention the lack of time spent with them).  In my town, women marry men with high-salary jobs, claim to be "stay-at-home" moms (though the kids are in school all day) and basically just play tennis, exercise, and shop.  They maintain this lifestyle by keeping their working husbands satisfied.  Now, they don't collect government funds, but I have much more respect for (and don't mind a portion of my taxes helping) the women who are raising kids alone while working tough jobs.

Mike, I wouldn't say it's as much a case of focusing on the "bad poor" versus "good poor" as it is a philosophical difference. Some people believe in the collective; others (like me) in the individual. Your opinion on that is just as valid as mine in this regard, but that's the root difference between liberals and conservatives.

One other point on this topic: Don't forget that government assistance is a zero-sum game. Every dollar spent on public assistance programs is one less dollar that a working taxpayer can spend to support his or her own family.

Every dollar spent on public assistance programs is one less dollar that a working taxpayer can spend to support his or her own family.

C'mon Bruce, our taxes don't work that way.  Its not a dollar for dollar allocation like that on either state or federal levels.  Do you really believe for one minute if all government subsidies to the poor were eliminated that you would see a reduction in your taxes?  As said many pages before -- once government has a budget it only goes up.  Programs come and go and but the bottom line budget never changes.

In a fair world, yes. The government's singular source of funding is the taxpayers, so every dollar spent comes from that source. There is no magic "money tree" - it all comes from us.

Now, in the real world, you are right - if Program X is cut, Program Y gets that money before it can ever make it back to the taxpayers.

Which is why it is so important not to create new programs or expand any existing programs - once those programs get funded, we'll be paying for them forever.

Mark - you missed my point - I'm not saying why poor people drink and smoke, I'm saying why the governement isn't stopping them.

"Some people believe in the collective; others (like me) in the individual. "

But the individual is in a far better position to thrive in a collective society than he would in an individualist society. Whereas a collective will find a lot of advantages if trying to succeeed within an individualist society. Okay, to be frank there is not and never has been a truly individualist society, but there's a reason for that.