People receiving Gov't assistance are employees of the state....

someone who sits at home and received SSDI, performs no services or labor for the government.

how the hell could they be considered an employee?

 

Wow twice in one topic.

Ron....please re-read my OP......never mind I'll quote it here...."people that are on government assistance and physically able". If they are not physically able then work is not possible. Some people though are on SSDI because of physical issues and while walking around picking up trash for example is out. Sitting behind a desk is very doable.

 

Why are you deemed unemployable?

You clearly are coherent enough to get online and argue that you have the right to loot my property due to your "need" so why couldn't you do something productive? Medical transcription online from home can actually be a decently paying job.

 

physically able doesn't mean they have the skills to get a good job.

physically able doesn't mean they have been able to find a job other than minimum wage burger flipper.



you are only an employee if you provide labor.

 

The screenings for drug use costs a lot more than it saves

And if someone does spend some of the welfare money on a joint what is the issue? Would it be the same if they went out and bought a beer?

 

Did you just bust out the republican manifesto of 1984 because it hadn't been out in a while?

 

Agreed, but what I'm proposing is menial labor work and pushing some paper can be menial.

 

That's why I suggested random testing to keep the cost down.

As far as the drugs, I would be good with using the laws of the land. If the money is Federal the joint smoker is out, since it is still against federal law. If the money is state and that state has legalize the smoking of a joint their in. As far as the beer goes, just don't drink before the test.....pretty simple.

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Not sure what you're referring to, but good job on a meaningful post. Your post numbers will appreciate it.

 

If you're only going to do random drug tests the costs per user caught will skyrocket. The return will be even worse.

Why not test federal and state employees then? Most of the money by far that you pay in taxes goes to their salaries (compared to welfare recipients) so if you don't want to pay for drug use why not start with the biggest potential gain? All federal and state employees including all elected members of Congress, the President etc all undergo annual drug testing.

So you have 23 million government employees in the US and you spend $38 per test which works out to $874 billion dollars a year to test for drugs. You catch a few using drugs and you fire them, then everyone goes and drinks a beer to celebrate. Sounds ridiculous but it makes about as much sense as what you're suggesting.

 

Like anything else in life it's possible if planned for. We could start by taking away the life long insurance benefits and make it only valid while in office. I know it sounds ludicrous but anyone receiving money from the government should be held to the same standards most of us are held to for our jobs. Besides, if we got rid of all the ones that would fail we might be able to afford the costs of government.

As far as the number goes, there are many companies that employ many more people than the federal government and they drug test so it must not break the bank to bad.

 

I'm referring to your post being the same old nonsensical BS right wingers have spewed out for the last 4 decades. Try to keep up.

 

Yet you're not disabled enough to type on a computer. Mmm is it because you just don't want to work?

There are plenty of jobs out there that you don't need to be physically able, just mentally able.

As I said something just doesn't add up with your circumstances.

 

I think is the exact reason why society is in decline. Why should you expect to get a high paying job without doing the hard work involved?

 

The reason the situation is what it is, is that there is no way to take each citizen and for someone to objectively define whether they are supposed to be working or not. You say it can be decided for them. But it can't.

 

The cost of welfare is relatively low within government spend and you can see from the link I posted that people using drugs on welfare is extremely small. Likely because they can't afford it. And your math doesn't work because as you can see the cost to look for drugs is magnitudes higher than what is saved.

And consumers ultimately pay the price for that drug testing, making US products just a bit less competitive. Most countries don't bother with testing or for example in Canada don't allow companies to do it.

If you're going to ask your government to do things like this don't complain about the high taxes that result from the costs.

 

I would like to see the research question. I really don't want a job. That being said, over the past 30 years since I was 16, I have only had six weeks of unemployment. Usually when I was in school full-time I had a part-time job. I'd rather travel and work on a PhD than have a job, but I'm lucky that I love my work and co-workers. I'm still only there for the paycheque and defined benefit pension.

 

So again good job with the meaningful post. Would you care to elaborate on why it's "nonsensical" to expect people to earn the money they get if they are physically and mentally capable?

 

Sure there is. If you are on "Disability" Welfare it might be a question, but if you're just getting aid......odds are you are physically able or you would be getting Disability instead.

 

what is a disability?

 

Agreed....just like the private employment market, but it would work to keep everyone "honest" if you take my meaning.

I was unable to locate a link indicating the number of workplace injuries per country, only a PDF. On this list however, the US has less injuries than most. Not saying the drug testing is linked, but might require a review.

Generally the only time I complain about taxes is when I see no appreciable value from the tax, or that it is targeting a particular segment of society. Prove to me that the tax has value and is not being used as a penalty against a small minority and I usually don't complain.

 

Whatever the government currently requires to receive SSDI and I'm not sure what those are. I can speak from personal experience that traumatic brain injury that leaves you unable to functional well counts though.

 

He did say this in the OP, "so shouldn't people that are on government assistance and physically able," That eliminated the disabled from the requirement he put forth to work. I took, "physically able," to mean just that.

 

So you leave defyning to someone else. If you were the person to decide who should be working, and it seems you should be, how long can a single mother remain home with her child without going to work at all, living paid by the state? A person who has millions of debt and no way of paying them back - he goes to work and all he earns is put to pay back what he will never be able to pay back - there is no reason for him go to work.. a person who has a job where he needs to walk a lot gets injured and can no longer walk properly. He is admitted early retirement but could still go to another kind of a job. He has the right to stop working and live on government expense? If you say there is no excuse why should some people be forced to work while others aren't just because they happen to have a child, a small injury, a partial disability. What if a person loses their family in a terrible accident, is unemployeed, healty but needs time to grieve, what will you call them; not disabled, not sick but should by common sense be given time. No title you can give so you shouldn't give them money either.

You should be able to seperate all these and a million more with your logic, personally. Otherwise you can't ask anyone else do that either.

 

this is why I support something other than "welfare"... I support cities giving jobs to people, they work 8-5 mon-fri and receive minimum wage, which is roughly equivalent to what they would receive in welfare benefits... they would become the cities workforce, taking care of parks, picking up garbage, all the city services that can be done with a high turnover rate and constant retraining of new people... you would still need full-time folks paid far better than them, to handle training and supervisor and some tasks you simply can't train people quickly... but this would replace a double digit chunk of the cities overpaid work force doing these tasks...

this would have a couple benefits... one, it would create an artificial labor shortage at the bottom rung of the ladder, sucking these people out of the workforce would put pressure on wages for these lower tier candidates, which means employers would be compelled to pay more to get them in the door... so this would also incentivize people to get those better jobs and move off the welfare from the city and into a better job thats less desirable... but it would create a social safety net, people knowing they could at any time, show up at a job center and apply to work immediately, no waiting or hoping they find a job some day and sit-n-spin down further every day... plus if people decided they didn't want to show up to work that day, they wouldn't get paid for that day, or if they showed up late, they would have to wait for the next full hour before punching in... this would teach some skills like showing up on time or at all to some people who severely lack these qualities currently... you want money, you gotta show!

the very people who show up to work, would also end up working to support those who are showing up, for things such as daycare, we could put some folks into training programs to do that job, now they can do it for those showing up with kids, and they can take that skill once they find a better daycare to work for thats not government run... which means not only do we not have to pay high rates for private daycare, we now give them no excuse for not showing up because they don't have daycare, so we save even more money and now have less waste... everything just continues to build off itself in this scenario... including prison inmates released, who can't get jobs because nobody will hire them, hey guess what, you just got a guaranteed job with the city now... show up and get paid and do a good job and work to find someplace else in the future thats better for you, but at least now you are generating a work history and possibly learning on the job skills you can translate to a better job someplace else...

BUT... unions will never allow this to happen... and liberals call this slavery... so this great revolutionary thought and I would say QUITE LIBERAL way of addressing the problem, will never from to fruition, because it would mean liberals would give up one of their strongest weapons, the public sector unions who spend hundreds of millions on them annually in order to keep their lush paychecks and jobs... so I guess its a choice, do people want the problem solved, or do they want to keep the corruption...

 

If you want meaningful responses, try meaningful posts. Regurgitating decades old right wing nonsense blaming the poor for everything is tired old tripe by this point. Making poor people rake leaves and take drug tests isn't a solution, it's marketing.