IS WELFARE A LIFESTYLE CHOICE FOR MANY

A CENTRIST DEMOCRAT'S VIEW


A destructive and divisive issue in the US and other developed countries is that we have created a system of public assistance, ostensibly to bridge the gap upon misfortune, unemployment, disability or catastrophe -- and yet we have an entire class of people who live on it. 


They pop children and go about their subsidized business, as a permanent lifestyle (and really know no better) -- generation to generation. 


Free medical care, free legal representation, free food, free electricity, free cell phones, subsidized housing, free money for BS'ing around pretending to look for jobs that are not even available, subsidized public transport -- 


It is the truly needy and unfortunate we must help and the rest mus be a target of rehabilitation, retraining and getting off their asses. 


The part society has to play is to make the getting off their asses a real option--i.e., that they can REALLY be retrained and relocated and employed. If it isn't real, it is just rhetoric. 

LETTERS

Is welfare a lifestyle choice for many?

Readers’ Letters

Mar 29, 2012

1. CHRISTOPHER ONSTOTT / TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO
2. Seattle Adkins feeds her five-week-old daughter, Erika, while son Marshaun, 2, plays in the living room. Adkins, 21, has company as a single woman choosing motherhood ahead of marriage, as half of the women under 30 giving birth in Multnomah County are unmarried.
3. Assisting the needy has been a core value of humanity throughout history. Each day, I try to remind myself that but for the grace of God, I might be living under a bridge and receiving my meals from a food kitchen.
4. Yet, I am troubled by the story, "Women choose different paths as single mothers" (March 15), as it reflects a sad truth: that public assistance/welfare has become a lifestyle choice for many able-bodied people who could otherwise be productive citizens of our society.
5. Work of any kind is a source of worth, dignity and self-esteem -- something that few of these volitional victims will ever experience.
6. Choosing to be a single parent almost certainly condemns these mothers and children to lifelong poverty. We must find the compassion and courage to stop enabling the very behavior that we condemn.
7. Every adult has the right to engage in selfish, self-destructive behavior. Making a conscious decision to become a single parent is one of them.
8. However, if you make such a decision, at least own it. Don't expect the American taxpayers to pay for it.

David Beebe

Beaverton