[quote=jpinpb][quote=davelj]
They contribute very little. No argument there. But that’s not the point of welfare in my eyes. Throwing a little money their way keeps SOME of them from robbing and killing us. [/quote]
What is wrong w/giving them a job instead. Teaching them a skill or trade. Make them earn the money. Then they can maybe even get some self-esteem and feel somewhat good about themselves.[/quote]
As davelj pointed out above, there are programs that try to do this.
I think of the productive capabilities of our population in terms of a bell curve. The majority of us are in the middle, while the outliers are either wildly capable of innovating and producing fantastic things with great efficiency, and the lower group is going to fail at almost anything they attept to do — perhaps due to mental, emotional, or physical deficiencies. IMHO, this lower group will always exist in any society, no matter how hard the PTB try to rehabilitate them into better, more productive members of society. Even if you killed all of them off today, a new group would crop up within a few years, IMHO.
It is this group that social spending programs (those not geared toward rehabilitation) are designed to keep comfortable enough and distracted enough to prevent them from becoming violent and endangering everyone and everything else.
