Government Benefit Recipients Outnumber Full-Time Workers

Government Benefit Recipients Outnumber Full-Time Workers

The U.S. Census Bureau has a released 2011 data that has some alarming statistics.

First;

there were 101,716,000 people who worked full-time year round.

Second;

There were 108,592,000 people in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs

The Census Bureau counted as recipients of means-tested government programs “anyone residing in a household in which one or more people received benefits from the program.” Many of these people lived in households receiving more than one form of means-tested benefit at the same time.

Story---
Government Benefit Recipients Outnumber Full-Time Workers


Supporting Article---
Census Bureau: Means-Tested Gov't Benefit Recipients Outnumber Full-Time Year-Round Workers

Cloward-Piven is Moving Right Along !!!

Many people are well aware that "Cloward-Piven" was/IS a real strategy published in 1966.

Many other people think it's just a wild theory that conspiracy theorists often use to sensationalize.

But, It's real.

AND, It's dangerous because it has been abbreviated and is being used for a different agenda than originally intended.

The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty". Cloward and Piven were a married couple who were both professors at the Columbia University School of Social Work. The strategy was formulated in a May 1966 article in liberal magazine The Nation titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty".

The two stated that many Americans who were eligible for welfare were not receiving benefits, and that a welfare enrollment drive would strain local budgets, precipitating a crisis at the state and local levels that would be a wake-up call for the federal government, particularly the Democratic Party. There would also be side consequences of this strategy, according to Cloward and Piven. These would include: easing the plight of the poor in the short-term (through their participation in the welfare system); shoring up support for the national Democratic Party then-splintered by pluralistic interests (through its cultivation of poor and minority constituencies by implementing a national "solution" to poverty); and relieving local governments of the financially and politically onerous burdens of public welfare (through a national "solution" to poverty)

Cloward–Piven strategy

reply to post by xuenchen


I gave you a star and a flag because I think this is a subject that merits discussion and revisiting from time to time (I do not believe you are the first to bring it up). I see you declared yourself as political enfranchised and with a single sided view of issues, so I'm not really expecting anything great beyond the OP from you on this subject... (hopping you prove me wrong)

I just would like to add to the discussion that maybe the problem was not the strategy or the implementation of one (I don't think it could be coordinated in the US political system, and escape the NSA and FBI). I think that those behind the proposed strategy only saw the clear issues of American society and that if any attempt to fair on the attribution of those social systems would collapse the US crony capitalism add to that levels of inefficiency and corruption and the thing is expedited... I do not think there is a need operate a conspiracy if the existing model is doomed to fail.

Yeah I read this a day ago. You know there is so much bad news anymore we can't possibly post it all. Perfect example right here... In Washington state, 35,000 signed up for medicaid via the Obamacare exchanges while 4,500 signed up for private plans. And I bet most of those private plan folks are getting decent subsidies. The welfare state is going to get much worse.

PS., Speaking of bad news... Did you know that Michelle Obama's Princeton pal is the VP of CGI (Obamacare website). No other bids were even considered. See what I mean? Every day the news gets worse and worse...

Hi xuenchen,

I don't know you, but can I bum a couple bucks?

The "public welfare system" is not a CAUSE....it is a result.

It is NOT the welfare system which *caused* the crisis or made the country bankrupt.

You are arguing like someone who got a serious illness and gets hospitalized and then says the problem at hand is THE HOSPITALIZATION (the cost, inconveniences, bad food etc.) RATHER THAN THE ILLNESS which got him there in first place.

lernmore
Hi xuenchen,

I don't know you, but can I bum a couple bucks?

Sure !!!

But call Watchington D.C. first....

Then send me your BitCoin and PayPal numbers

NoRulesAllowed
The "public welfare system" is not a CAUSE....it is a result.

It is NOT the welfare system which *caused* the crisis or made the country bankrupt.

You are arguing like someone who got a serious illness and gets hospitalized and then says the problem at hand is THE HOSPITALIZATION (the cost, inconveniences, bad food etc.) RATHER THAN THE ILLNESS which got him there in first place.

Maybe some numbers to back that up would help people understand.

Or at least a better explanation of the 'theory'.

TIA.

reply to post by xuenchen


Finally!

A Cloward-Piven thread!!!

Although, you could have just titled this, "I told you so".

(thumbs up emoticon here)

Panic2k11
reply to post by xuenchen

 

I gave you a star and a flag because I think this is a subject that merits discussion and revisiting from time to time (I do not believe you are the first to bring it up). I see you declared yourself as political enfranchised and with a single sided view of issues, so I'm not really expecting anything great beyond the OP from you on this subject... (hopping you prove me wrong)

I just would like to add to the discussion that maybe the problem was not the strategy or the implementation of one (I don't think it could be coordinated in the US political system, and escape the NSA and FBI). I think that those behind the proposed strategy only saw the clear issues of American society and that if any attempt to fair on the attribution of those social systems would collapse the US crony capitalism add to that levels of inefficiency and corruption and the thing is expedited... I do not think there is a need operate a conspiracy if the existing model is doomed to fail.

Interesting.

Are you suggesting the 'plan' included "Corporate" welfare too ?

Perhaps "Welfare" of the government agencies and bureaucracies as well ?

Those have become bloated just like the individual welfare.

xuenchen
send me your BitCoin and PayPal numbers

All I have left is a Litecoin wallet, will that do?

I don't get a government check...


Yet.

Pretty alarming. At this point people don't have much to stand on when they argue "Well, there's plenty of jobs but everyone is lazy, they don't want to work."

Nothing to see here folks ... move along ... move along.

Who will be our savior, and what freedoms will we give up to get out of this mess? I kid you not, I could have this problem cleaned up completely in two years, but I'd be the most hated man on the planet.

reply to post by xuenchen


Corporations are a creation of the state and they benefit from big government directly (hence they promote it), the bigger the government the larger the control a big corporation has about the attribution of it, the less competition lesser corporations can offer (lesser corporations are terminated or absorbed). This is why all US cities today are all equal...

I think the welfare state is the result of a lot of things:
* We teach kids how to be a successful student, not how to work.
* Low-skill jobs sent overseas; some displaced workers fail to readjust.
* Welfare programs decrease consequences and people make worse decisions.
* Increasing awareness of the plight of others and feelings of sympathy.
* Evolution fails to respond effectively; obesity and increasing sedentary lifestyles.
* Illegal drugs with increasing potency.
* Over-controlling government; like over-controlling parents.
* People tend to support systems they depend on and/or can't easily escape.
etc...

The world is constantly shifting around us. The conditions are different from one moment to the next. Old solutions no longer work. New solutions can't apply to the old world, either. Each decade is like a new world with new circumstances.

We're hopeless to understand much beyond what's happening NOW.

What's the solution to our economic woes of late? It will come about, as if from the cloud. Neither you or I can say with any certainty what it will be. Nonetheless, many people will make predictions of this sort and some will do well and others won't.

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed

NoRulesAllowed
The "public welfare system" is not a CAUSE....it is a result.

And it should be neither.

See, that's the thing you people don't understand about a proper social state principle.

All it can ever be is a short time interim aid, set up to support citizens via occupational retraining programs, providing both the skill and the incentive to apply themselves, in order to put them back to work as soon as possible.

That's the only way the social state principle works.

ColCurious
set up to support citizens via occupational retraining programs, providing both the skill and the incentive to apply themselves

Why ... is it society's responsibility? That is the role of the parent. Unfortunately ... the socialist state and political correctness have managed to find a a way to reward useless parents.

reply to post by Snarl

Snarl
Why ... is it society's responsibility?

No. It is not society's responsibility, because at that point it would already be a burden.
A social principle is generous and should not be taken for granted, taken advantage of, nor seen as a long term solution.
Now it should be voluntary at the giving end (which would make it truely "social" IMO), but what I tried to say is: it must work for the benefit of a nation, not at its expense.
Society should profit from it, not be dragged down by it. That's the only way it makes any sense at all.

I guess in the end it all comes down to moral integrity and proper work ethics.

This deficit spending is not sustainable, but the population depends on it now more than ever. At some point it will give, only God knows what that's going to look like.

BlubberyConspiracy
This deficit spending is not sustainable, but the population depends on it now more than ever. At some point it will give, only God knows what that's going to look like.

Obama just recently claimed this:

Despite a $17 trillion debt, President Barack Obama assured high school students and teachers in Brooklyn on Friday that there are enough resources for the spending on education, research and infrastructure, so long as tax loopholes are closed.

$17 Trillion Debt, but Obama Says ‘We’ve Got Enough Resources’ to Spend More

Although the above title is way too biased, the article has what I was looking for.

I am a person of principle, so I will tell you this. Although I do not agree with raising the debt limit, I agree 100% on closing tax loopholes. You see, I do not disagree with Obama just to disagree with him personally. Most times he pulls some really rank crap. But, he is smack on with this tax loophole business, and if the republicans fight him on this, I will smear them as much as I have with dems recently.

And, of course, we will have the inevitable mumbling of people going on and on and on about how lazy the rest of the country has gotten and blah blah blah.

My only commentary is that, if you look at the cost of living these days and the kinds of jobs out there and are a reasonable, honest human being, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why we have so many on the welfare rolls.

Foodstamps have just about doubled in the last five yeas. That didn't happen because twice the number of population magically got lazy.

It happened because a lot of middle and lower middle class jobs either evaporated or went over seas and just didn't come back because of the financial crisis. It happened because the government decided to let American corporations poach talent from third world countries and bring them over here on visas. It happened because the American government has all kinds of free trade agreements with countries that don't honor those agreements and keep heavy tariffs against products from us.

Most of all, though, it happened because the government just cannot stop legislating every last little thing and forcing people to go through a mile of red tape to make an inch of progress.