The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor

[Dash87]

122. If you give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you'll feed him

for a lifetime. What you're saying makes perfect sense.

Here's where the Republicans are wrong: Welfare can be a holistic approach as well. You can throw a ladder into a hole to try and get someone out, but it's not worth a damn if they don't know how to climb. This is an area where the government can definitely help and currently ignores. Financial planning services that teach budgeting and wise spending could increase the worth of government money given out ten-fold.

There's also the issue of finding jobs - this is a problem that you didn't address in your post. What good are advanced life skills with no money to use? This is another area that fails in the feedback system that welfare is supposed to be (and why the Republican philosophy is so counter-productive). Sneering at the unemployed and creating an "unemployed underclass" is the worst thing you can ever do. You're creating leaks in the welfare feedback system, which bleed potential tax revenue out of the hands of the government. Has Washington forgotten what welfare is supposed to be?

Remember, "a chicken in every pot?" That's what we're supposed to be striving for - not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it has numerous benefits for the government (and our nation as a whole). Part of the issue is also that wages have not kept up with costs these days. Financial planning isn't always going to cut it when you can't afford anything anyways. We need to increase the minimum wage to a livable amount. Keeping people below poverty level is doing more damage than inflation could ever do. They end up generating even less revenue for the government.

You're also right that making things needlessly complex for people that are already frustrated can only lead to failure.