How about some CCC and WPA 2.0?

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by BigV

If I'm getting a check for working, what makes that welfare?

Because you are required to do something for the government in order to get a check; replace all had outs with a true work program. Where is the problem with that?

If you're spending money on a project, the expenses of the project, isn't the project what you're spending the money on? Aren't you seeking the benefit of having the project completed? To my mind, the money's spent on the project, not on the "minority", implying the wages of the people who work on it.

Why not take projects that have already been budgeted for and in the process of using tax dollars to complete, have people who get the welfare check required to show up and do a little work for it?

Unless you envision something stupid like paying one group to dig a hole and then paying another group to fill the same hole. Then you're spending money for no lasting project, nothing with lasting benefit, though those groups deserve to be paid for their labor, both of them.

Isn't that what the WPA and CCC did? I don't think most of the projects were digging holes and filling them. Some of the most lasting projects of the WPA and CCC can still be found today.

And if you got the money for such a project, more power to you.

Given what Obama did with his "Stimulus" and "Shovel ready jobs" program I am thinking the money was out there before it was wasted. A lot more people could have been employed if the money was given out more carefully. But it wasn't, it was squandered.

But no one's suggesting such a project, only ones that have lasting value. And the expenses of such projects will include labor costs, as practically all projects do, even your own home improvement projects, though you might calculate your labor costs at $0.00/hr like I usually do.

Well they are getting more than that to do nothing.

I am not against a social net to give to people who are in need a helping hand, but we have created entire generations of people who don't work and depend on the system to support them. I am not sure that is what was intended when it was developed. I think Clinton was among the first to try to tackle the issue and as I recall he did a pretty good job of reducing the welfare rolls, I am just saying the job is not done.