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Originally Posted by Bold Brooklynite
You're beginning to see the light ... but ...
... why should anyone ... who has two legs, two arms, and a functioning brain ... need "a leg up"? And who will decide who needs the leg up and who doesn't? And who will decide just what a "leg up" means ... and what it doesn't? That's just another high-minded sounding bit of socialist claptrap.
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Maybe the girls I knew in the transitional housing program who had a child or two when they were barely adults themselves, whose parents had completely failed them, who were on the streets themselves as children, who were usually molested as kids, who've overcome addictions to save their own kids, who wanted a chance but were screwed by the current system (one of the many incongruities of the current welfare reform is the rule that you can't afford childcare or be given time to look for it until you have a job...but you can't find a job until you have somewhere to put your kids...). Of course, you'll probably tell me that it's their fault they got pregnant, had bad parents, didn't have anyone to watch out for the as children, dropped out of high school, couldn't find jobs, wound up on the streets and are trying to fix their lives now with -- gasp! -- actual help from the government. Obviously, they should just spend the rest of their lives paying for their mistakes until they can do everything without any help at all, because that's the American way. And then *their* kids will end up on the streets. And you'll complain about all those poor people draining the system.
People in the social work world will tell you that Welfare to Work reforms have mostly harmed honest people who *WANT* to do better. Although I have a feeling you probably equate social work with bleeding-heart liberal socialism (my apologies if not). As far as I'm concerned, the government should definitely give people a leg-up when they need it. In my personal opinion, a lot more people need it than you think. It's certainly more important for the government to do that than some of the roles it currently fills, like prying into every aspect of our personal lives to shake its finger at "aberrant" behavior.
(Like pgarden, I consider the military to provide precisely that function. There's a reason most of my high school classmates are in the military: my hometown is poor. Most kids don't have anywhere else to go apart from the local tire stores, so guess what offers them a better opportunity?)
Thinkg about all of the people who need a "leg up" that the government assists: veterans, via the VA; victims of natural disasters, via FEMA (at least in theory); family members of those killed in action, who receive some financial support after the deaths of their loved ones; students who take out federal loans (getting smaller by the day)...most of us receive some sort of help in some way or another.