Welfare Whiners

OutOfBreath

Saturnal wrote:

The lazy effect is rarely found because it's very difficult to show or prove. You can't ask 100 people "Is the reason you're unemployed due to laziness?", and expect to get accurate data for some study.

Probably not, but that's not what I'm talking about either. I'm talking raw data. How many gets how much for how long. Those are the numbers that count.

A better study would be to find people who are not on welfare, but who live in an area where there is a high percentage of welfare recipients, and ask them about it. Then you will get some accurate data. I don't have a study like that, but I do know myself and other people I've talked to who live in such areas. And none of them say "rarely do I see lazy people leeching off the welfare system". However, none of them say "Welfare is only for lazy people". But it's clear there is a problem with it, and it needs to be reformed more than it has been.

That study would measure people's opinions and prejudices against people on welfare, nothing else. Although that could be interesting in itself.

And as someone mentioned before, corporate welfare is a lot worse, and gets little attention. That's why the social welfare issue is thrown in our faces all the time. It's complex, and it keeps our eyes off the major welfare leechers: corporations.

Quite possibly.

What truly speaks is analyzing a client's trajectory within various programs. I have just done that with Norwegian data from 1989-1995, and looked at records entering and leaving unemployment benefits and social assistance. (1989-1995 was a period of high unemployment in Norway) What I find over 62.000 records, is that a very small amount stay unemployed for very long, and of these unemployed, very few collect social assistance over time.

In other words, the norwegian system works largely as intended in that most people seem to get out pretty soon. There are some that stick of course, but they aren't that many comparatively. It's not so important how many registered unemployed you have at a given time, it is how long the various stay that way. If they get switched for others often, then the problem isn't too great and just periodical for the individuals involved. This is for Norway, mind. I do not know how it would look with canadian data.

Peace
Dan