How can we break the cycle of generational welfare dependency?

Please explain how we can do this, especially like today when government spending and federal, state and local taxes are so high.

 

The middle class does not even factor into this situation. The middle class is not impoverished, the lower class is. A strong middle class will not cause a trickle-down effect to bring the lower class out of poverty.

 

What's your estimate of the number?

What's your source?

 

I think it does. With a large middle class welfare would be a minimum cost and not held with such contention. Not necessarily a trickle down, instead more people with helping people without.

 

I don't know. Maybe we are already to far down the path. I just feel that, the way the middle class goes so does the country.

 

We need to bring good-paying jobs back to America.

We can do this by lowering the corporate income tax.

Obama proposes lowering corporate tax rate to 28 percent

President Obama proposed a major overhaul of the nation’s corporate tax code on Wednesday, an election-year gambit that aims to draw a contrast over a key policy issue with the Republicans vying to replace him.

The plan would lower the nation’s corporate tax rate to 28 percent. At the same time, Obama wants to boost overall revenue from corporate taxation by banning numerous deductions and loopholes that save companies tens of billions of dollars a year on their tax bills.

The current U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent is one of the highest in the world, but the abundance of loopholes and deductions enable many businesses to pay far less than that — or nothing at all. Companies in the United States pay almost half the taxes that companies in other rich countries pay, compared with the size of the economy, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-02-22/business/35446066_1_corporate-tax-tax-rate-minimum-tax

 

The corporate tax rate and effective current tax rate have been on the decline for the past several decades. Obama wants to lower it and close loop holes? Does that mean the effective rate would go up?

lower taxes, sounds good to me....

 

I guess then so does letting the rich get richer while allowing the poor to continue suffering, and don't tell me the poor don't suffer. Ever been so poor that you had to choose between your own eating and providing for your child?

I say the corporate tax doesn't need to be lowered, it needs to be raised.

Look at Walmart and McDonald's. Together, they employ 2.5 million people. The majority of those workers are paid hourly, not salary, and I'd bet most of the workers also fall under the poverty line and don't have health insurance. I know from experience, Walmart doesn't offer health insurance to full-time workers until they work there six months full time, and a year part-time.

Raising the minimum wage would not impact these large corporations that drastically. In fact, the money that they'd make from the lowest people in society being able to spend more money would outweigh the extra wage expenses.

To make it equitable for smaller businesses, minimum wages can be phased in over a period of twenty years.

 

The first step is eliminate Corporate Welfare. That has to be achieved first.

 

The government already did that with tax cuts for the wealthy. They are sitting on over 2 trillion dollars in cash right now.

 

I have been hungry and do not want to be again. Choose not to have children mostly due to the expense and I am selfish.
I have not ate McDonald for about 10 years. I would never again eat the stuff they serve and I do not care what the employees make. No one should be eating there. On another note, at what hourly rate will technology replace fast food workers?
Once or twice a year I stop into Walmart, but do everything I can to avoid the place.

I am not for or against the raising the minimum wage. Could be swayed either way. I don't think it is a solution for getting future generations off of welfare.

 

Correct. Do otherwise and the benefits to society are only good on paper (not real/practical).

 

You VALUE the WELL BEING of the American people. You APPRECIATE the work they do to keep things going/improving; invest in the POSITIVE things being accomplished.

Really, any other policy is just smoke, mirrors and CRAP.

 

I don't see humans being removed from the fast-food industry anytime soon, No increase in the minimum wage has ever caused an equal raise in the unemployment rate, and with each new technology, the unemployment rate has recovered.

 

5 Years to get off and it's over.

 

Yet, there IS evidence which indicates increases in the minimum wage has improved employment. I say raise the hell out of it; invest in the people working... so that their working allows them to make a living BY working. This CRAP where the structures allows so many to be the working poor, is a terrible economic illusion that needs to fade away forever.

People should work to get paid... but a person who works 30-60 hours per week, ought to be able to make a living. I'd say that anything else is just immoral and only leads to instability within society.

 

How is the unemployment rate supposed to recover when Obama has made 3+ million new legal residents over the last 3 years?

 

There is no "Obama phone". That stupid-assed video is generally bogus.

The program the woman is likely referring to goes back at least as far as Ronald Reagan; and is also the program that later provided internet service to rural areas.

 

It can't be "optional", you can't say "here's money, create jobs if YOU FEEL LIKE IT", it has to be "Create jobs 1st and then we'll pay you after we see the people employed".

 

You basically have to reintroduce the concept of shame into the community (via church and community and political leaders). If Welfare dependency is not seen as being shameful, there is a lot less incentive to break the dependency. If you could combine this with a public schedule of reducing welfare payments (letting people know in advance) and write a tight enough law to survive the inevitable court challenges, the dual incentive of less money and less public esteem might change things.

 

End the "trickle down" policies that have moved twice the amount of the nation's income (from 10% to 20%) and twice the amount of the nation's wealth (from 20% top 40%) to the 1%. Beef up the minimum wage, unions, overtime laws to improve middle class incomes. Cut taxes for the middle classes and increase them on the richest. Make advanced education available to all at a reasonable cost. Increase retirement health care, for the middle classes, cut them for the wealthiest. Revise the tax code so that the richest don't have the loopholes and special tax privileges that reduce their taxes. Disincentive moving business overseas.

"Trickle down" has pounded the middle classes, and along with it, our economy. By reversing "trickle down" and moving some of that income and wealth back to the middle classes, we empower our economy which creates more, better paying jobs and higher profits and benefits everyone.

 

The only shame the politicians are capable of introducing is the shame of their constituents for electing the politicians.

A child cannot choose to be born into poverty, shaming them for something outside of their control is a despicable concept that will not work. In fact, if you shame a child, you will foster resentment the child holds. Instead of shaming them, shame the people that allow it to happen.

The social stigma of welfare should not be that it exists, but that it grows. The reason it grows is directly traceable to the politicians we elect into office who care more for their big money donors than they do for every one of their constituents.

Honestly, if someone were to go up to a welfare family and say "You should be ashamed for being on welfare," I'd look at them and say "You should be ashamed that you are voting in the jackasses that are keeping this family in the gutter! It's not their fault they're disadvantaged, they did not ASK to be poor! Shame on you for allowing it to happen!"

 

The one point you make that I agree with is the affordable education (which I believe we already do). You're other ideas are in conflict in the real world, You'd like to increase the minimum wage, strengthen unions, and increase taxes on the rich, while at the same time not giving businesses incentive to move businesses overseas or outsource. You're creating incentive to lose jobs by raising minimum wage union strength and taxes. There is an abundance of labor in the world right now, and the more cost-effective it is for businesses to "tap" this labor the more likely they will be to do it. The only way out for us is to strengthen our skill sets through higher education or professional trades, those that can't do that will be left behind, very quickly if we raise minimum wages, taxes, and unions.

 

If we aspire to never "allow" someone to be poor, it gives no incentive for the person to not want to be poor, because they know, that no matter what someone will take care them and not allow them to be poor.

 

Education.