I guess is was a rhetorical question aimed more at public housing administrations than at the residents.  As these people are already getting a free or highly subsidized ride, I don't know why the housing authorities can't require a little work from each resident every month as a condition of residence.

As these people are already getting a free or highly subsidized ride, I don't know why the housing authorities can't require a little work from each resident every month as a condition of residence.

What do you do when they don't show up?  Kick them out to homelessness?  Make them move to the "really bad" housing?  Spank them?  I find it as frustrating as you do, but I don't know that you can force people to be responsible (it's sort of an oxymoron, isn't it?).  

Yeah, I guess when people have already fallen through every other safety net, there's not much more you can threaten them with.

Troll

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Pretentious? Moi?

Still trolling

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Oh, come on, Lou. Joshu asked a simple question and I gave a plausible answer. Is it provocative? Sure, but it's not a troll.

They see me trollin, they hatin.

Then I'd get a t-shirt made up of some poor soul with a disability and superimpose it on there, like so. But I'm not, so I won't.

Well, I don't know if I'd be quite so flippant, but I see quite a bit of that around here. It's not uncommon to see people (even kids with their parents/responsible adult nearby) throwing garbage all around. The stop signs and lights seem to become a refuse disposal station. People dump shit all over lawns and even do bodily functions in the streets or people's property. (My recent 'favorite' was the guy going at 745am with one hand "occupied" with the other holding a 40 in a paper bag. He then promptly zippered up, and proceeded to panhandle the shocked homeowners in their driveways. WTF?)

Perhaps it is an overwhelming lack of connection to the surrounding community. As my hardcore Italian neighbor says "People who don't own anything, and never will, will never respect the property of others." To wit, the guy who walked through our (clearly marked) sidewalk hours after I'd paid to have it re-cemented (the city was being the city and I didn't want to risk the safety of people tripping in one of the craters or cracks). I confronted the guy about it and he told me to "Hurry up and fix it before it sets." In situations where the owners are "faceless" its even worse. The community pool up the road is always broken into by punk kids who bust holes in the fence to swim in it after hours. Stores get spray painted. Whole neighborhoods go downhill.

This has a negative effect on the law abiding property owners who live in the area. After a summer of having liquor bottles dumped in our flower planter, or having a human whale plant his/her/its giant backside on the plants while waiting for the bus, crushing them daily we decided not to put the effort into them this year.

So what do we do about it? I don't know what else to do but report crimes to a generally uncaring police force or shame some of the morons in question. People sure do get pissed at you when you walk up to their car and lob their garbage right back into their vehicle. But, I think with a country suffering from a housing glut that it would be just fine to pull the funding from these programs and let people take care of themselves. No sense subsidizing able bodied folks who just don't feel like pulling their own weight. From any reasonable measurement it is clear they have failed. So yeah, some people are lazy.

As my hardcore Italian neighbor says...

...we do live in a world in which the preponderance of resources go toward military purposes

the preponderance of resources go toward military purposes

That's not even true if we narrow the definition of "resources" to "federal tax revenue," much less if we mean the economy as a whole.

There are at least some countries where military spending eclipses all other kinds, and I was thinking on a global level, however, I admit that I have made an exaggeration.  Nonetheless, military spending is extremely high.  That is my point.

That was good. I found amusing the description of how the academics were so puzzled by the pattern they were detecting.

...not everyone in these places is some miscreant who's too lazy to work for a living.  Some of them can't, and we have a responsibility as human beings to take care of them.

I agree, some of them can't. But the majority (in my city I would confidently go so far as to say the vast majority) of them CAN, and I believe it is those folks that the other commenters on this story are addressing.

Are there people who absolutely need government help to keep a roof over their heads? Of course. But the fact that those people do exist should in no way excuse the behavior of the majority of public housing tenants or Section 8 voucher recipients who are capable of taking care of themselves.

{Insert amusing quotation here}

Exactly. Get rid of the government bureaucrats (who have a vested interest in perpetuating the cycle of poverty) and replace them with private charities that can competently seperate the wheat from the chaff (or leeches from the disabled or whatever). The charity rolls will shrink faster than you could imagine. Budgets shrink, the "ghettos" become more livable, ABBA goes back on tour.

Everybody wins, except for the welfare queens. Which is fine with me.

You may feel confident saying the majority, but that doesn't make it so.  What are you basing these conclusions on?

Q: What do you think of western civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

I am it basing on  1) something that, unfortunately, I can't find a link for as it happened 10+ years ago and 2) something that is, admittedly, anecdotal.

1) In the years immediately after Clinton's welfare reform passed Congress, the population of the two largest "old style" downtown projects here dropped by something like 20%. In fact, the only way that city administrators got a hostile democratic- and minority-controlled city council to agree to take HOPE VI money to tear those projects down and replace them with mixed-income developments was the fact that there were large numbers of vacancies in those projects with no waiting lists.

My take on that? When forced to work, a lot of those folks decided they might as well move someplace decent.

2) In the years before those two projects were demolished, I used to have to drive along the southern edge of one of them to get to and from my office every day. The "vast majority" of people I saw loitering around were males between about 18 and about 25 or 30.

Now, I'm sure we have very different takes on this, but to me any able-bodied individual in the prime of their lives should not qualify for housing assistance. Housing assistance should be reserved for the disabled, the ill, the elderly, and mothers with small children. Period.

The "vast majority" of the people I saw every day did not fit into any of those categories.

{Insert amusing quotation here}

You bring up some interesting points. I could respond to them but I'd likely end up rehashing some things I've repeated multiple times before. So I'll just say this:

So let's remember that not everyone in these places is some miscreant who's too lazy to work for a living.  Some of them can't, and we have a responsibility as human beings to take care of them.

But why does this need to be done through some massive government bureaucracy? You complain about such agencies in your post, yet we need to expand funding for these types of agencies? Why not abolish Section 8 and the like and replace it with private charities. Charities that are accountable and can kick out the buttheads that cause so many problems in the housing projects. Charities that have better oversight and management of their funds. Charities that aren't going to stand for pools of blood in the streets of their projects or be retaliatory against tenants groups.

There is a better way. People just need to realize that the oft proposed "Government handout vs. dying in the streets while billionaires laugh" is a horribly false dichotomy.

I've heard the whole "the private sector can do things better than the gov't" argument before, but I've never found it especially compelling.  For example, how do you explain the dramatic decrease in poverty among the elderly after the establishment of Social Security?

Private charities could do things, but they don't, that's the reality.  The only way it'll get done is the government stepping in and saying things are going to happen.

We allow the gov't to dictate our behavior all over the place, but only when it involves helping people does it become a bad thing.

Q: What do you think of western civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

For example, how do you explain the dramatic decrease in poverty among the elderly after the establishment of Social Security?

Social Security was started during the Depression when poverty was high. When the depression ended poverty would have been reduced anyway.

Private charities could do things, but they don't, that's the reality.  The only way it'll get done is the government stepping in and saying things are going to happen.We allow the gov't to dictate our behavior all over the place, but only when it involves helping people does it become a bad thing.

Private charities don't get the support they need because people won't contribute to cover the same tasks that are supposedly being done (albeit horribly incompetently) by the government. If this was not the case the appeals of these organizations would be much better received.

Social Security was started during the Depression when poverty was high. When the depression ended poverty would have been reduced anyway.

That's just as high above the shark as claiming that it doesn't matter if your parents are rich or poor.  The depression was ended by government spending, on war production and on social programs.  We had social programs designed to reduce poverty, and poverty went down, and you say it would have happened anyway.  That's just plain insane.

Wait a minute. Government spending cured the depression? It ended poverty? Then how come we've been dumping cash by the ton into these programs for the past 70 years and there are still ghettos? There are still poor people? There are still people living in deplorable conditions?

It is clear these programs are failures.

It ended poverty?

I don't believe that JH made that claim.

The poverty rate before those programs, before the Depression, was 30+%.  The rate dropped over the years until it reached 11%, and has only crept up as those programs were attacked.

We spend a lot of money on police, but there are still robberies and murders.  Are we wasting our money there?

...as those programs were attacked

Government spending cured the depression? It ended poverty? Then how come we've been dumping cash by the ton into these programs for the past 70 years and there are still ghettos? There are still poor people? There are still people living in deplorable conditions?

Government work programs and WWII spending did cure the depression, yes. Those ghettos are a whole lot less shitty with fewer poor people. These expenditures are a tiny, tiny part of the federal budget.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Look at the link Steve Urkel provided on Section 8. What good does it do society if it merely transplants crime from the 'hood to once viable, safe areas? My city is having this problem as first ring suburbs are starting to get overrun with violent crime and gangs. I'd rather that crap be confined to one particular area.

Furthermore, I'd hesitate to suggest that as a whole welfare spending is a tiny portion of the federal budget.

Get your dick out of that hole!

If charities were doing the job, we never would have started the public welfare system in the first place.

From what I can see, the problems stem from punitive rules, not from easy money.  If you do some work, your benefits get cut, and you end up worse off than if you didn't do anything...so people end up not doing anything.  If you have a husband, your benefits get cut...so women don't marry, and kids grow up without a father.  After a couple of generations, you have a culture of poverty created by punitive rules that were meant to prevent welfare chiselers, but really only made it harder on those who weren't chiseling.

If charities were doing the job, we never would have started the public welfare system in the first place.

And if taxes weren't so high because of our bloated welfare state people would have more money (and be more likely to give --- who wants to give to help the poor when double digit percentages of their income are already being reappropriated for supposedly this purpose?)

From what I can see, the problems stem from punitive rules, not from easy money.  If you do some work, your benefits get cut, and you end up worse off than if you didn't do anything...so people end up not doing anything.  If you have a husband, your benefits get cut...so women don't marry, and kids grow up without a father.  After a couple of generations, you have a culture of poverty created by punitive rules that were meant to prevent welfare chiselers, but really only made it harder on those who weren't chiseling.

This only goes to show how incompetent the public welfare system is and argues for its abolishment.

Anyway, where does personal responsibility come into this? Everybody starts out with the same clean credit record despite the wealth of the parents. There is no requirement to have children without getting married or at an early age.

In any event, chisling welfare benefits is becoming relatively common if my observations are representative of a larger trend. Perhaps the system needs to be fixed from the ground up? I suggest concentrating on those who actually need the help for a short period of time rather than breeding multigenerational cycles of poverty.

if taxes weren't so high because of our bloated welfare state people would have more money (and be more likely to give

How much of the budget goes to welfare?  

TANF which is the program that sends checks to poor single mothers is .63% of the federal budget or about 18 billion dollars in 2007.

This only goes to show how incompetent the public welfare system is and argues for its abolishment.

The rules were made by people who despised the poor.  Letting the poor starve won't fix anything.

Everybody starts out with the same clean credit record despite the wealth of the parents.

OK, you've jumped the shark now.  You really don't see any difference between having poor parents and rich parents?

How much of the budget goes to welfare?  

    TANF which is the program that sends checks to poor single mothers is .63% of the federal budget or about 18 billion dollars in 2007. So starving all those little kids would only net you a couple of bucks...if they bothered to kick it back.

TANF is not the only welfare program. Here is a quick example. Take Buffalo, NY, one of the failing cities we talked about earlier. Look at their budget numbers. Almost half of the money goes to health and human services expenditures, over six times what is spent on police/fire, and ten times what is spent in the schools. The average taxpayer pays half a grand a year just for medicaid, alone. The mandated amount spent on welfare programs far exceeds what is even used to develop the economy or return the region to its long lost prosperity. This is just the welfare outlay of ONE level of government.

How in the hell is this even sustainable? Perhaps if we are spending over 10X as much on entitlements and human services as we are on education and we end up with such disastrous results maybe it would be wise to reexamine our priorities?

Your assumption is that "health and human services" is 100% welfare.  But there are a lot of things covered under that heading, from vaccination programs to TB certifications for food service workers.

Have a look at the New Hampshire DHHS Web page.  How much of that looks like welfare to you?  Is mosquito abatement welfare?  Is water quality testing welfare?

If you're going to argue that welfare is overfunded, you're going to have to cite the actual programs, not lump them in with a lot of others.

The cost of Medicaid is a function of our failed health care system.  But I suppose if all the poor children died, then we wouldn't have to worry about welfare anymore.