>> Now, which set of bloodsucking leeches that get paid with
>> taxpayer money did you NOT want to buy presents?
>>
>> President Obama
>> Teachers
>> Congress
>> Mail carriers
>> The Military
>> Seniors on Social Security
>> Defense contractors
>> Police Officers
>
> These people are assumed to either be working for their money or to have
> worked for it.
That's certainly not the case with Congress.
> They can do what they want with it. Whether they're
> worth what they're paid is a different question, of course.
>
>> The Unemployed on Unemployment
>> People on Welfare
>
> These are subsistence payments designed to keep people from dropping
> dead in the streets from starvation.
They are way too large if the only purpose is subsistence to keep
them from starving. Putting them in a Welfare Zoo would be a lot
cheaper (no need for clothes). So would processing some of them
into Solyent Green to feed the others. There is hope that people
will use some of that money to buy a good suit, maybe get some more
education, learn how to interview, and actually get a job and get
off welfare. In the current economy, that's difficult to do, but
some do that anyway. But to do that, the payments are larger than
"subsistence".
It is still the law that they can do what they want with this money.
There are some programs like food stamps which require that the
money be spent on specific things. Unemployment and Welfare in
general are not included in this. You don't want to add one auditor
per three welfare recipients to the cost of welfare.
> Christmas gifts are NOT
> subsistence, they're a luxury.
That depends entirely on what the present is. It may not even
cost money.
Christmas gifts may be gifts of necessities. I don't know how it
was when you grew up, but when I did, Christmas gifts to kids usually
included clothes, school supplies, and other things reasonably
classed as necessities. The kids may not have appreciated this as
much as they should have. They also tended to include food (and
not just candy). And my family was not on welfare, and only briefly
on unemployment. (and by "clothes", I do *not* mean prom dresses,
$200 footwear, school uniforms, and other expensive fashions not
suitable for school).
If you didn't have someone around watching our family open presents,
you wouldn't know what was a "present" and what was a "necessity",
as there is a lot of overlap between the two. Is a new winter coat
to replace an old one that's worn out and too small a luxury if
it's a present and a necessity if it's not? No. Does it really
matter whether the husband pays to have the house exterminated and
the wife replaces a failing refrigerator, vs. the wife giving the
husband extermination as a present and the husband giving the wife
a refrigerator? Same $$$ spent, either way. I've seen two kids
give each other $100 as a Christmas present. They passed a quarter
back and forth until they had each given the other $100. Guess
what? After they did that, the one that had the quarter still had
it.
Granted, my family did give me some presents you'd probably classify
as "luxuries", including educational toys and books, which probably
contributed a lot to success in school and later in the job market.
Some churches give out presents to some of the needier families in
the area: bags of groceries, repairs to their homes, food baskets,
and sometimes clothing. Funny, it was some of these needier families
that went all-out contributing money to this project. Are you also
going to protest that church contributions by welfare recipients
are luxuries?
The fact that some welfare recipients may use the money for luxuries,
whether they are presents or not, such as HDTVs, expensive cars and
jewelry, beer, recreational drugs, etc. does not make the payments
any bigger.
> Jewish taxpayers don't buy Christmas
> gifts; why should they be required to give money to other people so
> THEY can buy Christmas gifts?
Why should they be required to give money to other people so they
don't die in the streets? Congress seems to have decided that they
should. And the payments don't get any bigger because they give
Christmas gifts. Is there any group that doesn't give birthday
presents?
> I see a difference between unemployment and welfare; the unemployed
> actually worked for a living at one time, unlike welfare recipients who
> are no more essential to a functioning society than pet goldfish. Less,
> in fact; goldfish are cheaper.
Welfare recipients are not necessarily recipients for life. Some of
them held good jobs until something happened like a serious medical
problem, which may or may not be fixable after some time. Some of them
may eventually get off of welfare eventually.
If you want to reduce the amount of money going down the public-sector
welfare rathole, get Congress to do a few things:
- Don't give welfare or unemployment to people who are not allowed
to work (illegal aliens).
- Insist that people on welfare who can work prove that they are looking
for a job (unemployment already does this).
- Don't encourage those on welfare to breed by increasing their benefits
a lot for more kids.
- Implement procedures so illegal aliens are not allowed to vote.
- Don't give welfare to people for life.
- Charge each Congresscritter a tax of one cent per million dollars of
National Debt per year.
- Stop bailing out large corporations and banks.