Posted inThank You Sir May I Have Another

Why Not Cap and Trade Welfare

seasoned_geek by seasoned_geek

I had a rather large discussion about this last night in a chat room. It was pretty obvious, the one government worker championing leaving Welfare as it is, completely unsupervised and draining the economy, had no idea what it was like being on the other side paying taxes so multiple generations of families could choose “ Welfare as a Lifestyle” without ever applying for a job. The rest of us proposed common sense limits.

  • Within 3 months of starting welfare without a doctor’s certification of mental or physical disability, you must enroll in either Vocational school or college.
  • To stay on Welfare, you must be either certified by a physician (different physician every two years) or, you must be maintaining a B- average in your coursework with a planned date of graduation.
  • You get a maximum of one year on Welfare without being certified by a physician or enrolled in education maintaining a B-. It is not unrealistic to demand a B- in the training chosen by the individual since they only have to go to school and choose the number of classes they take at one time. Most educational institutions let you drop a class long before it impacts your grade.
  • If you are both on Welfare and living in government provided housing, the government has the option of relocating you to a state and city which needs you in the labor force. If you aren’t certified by a physician as being unable to work, you will participate in the relocation and do your best at the job. As your income increases you will be migrated to Section 8 (or whatever) rental assistance, then completely out of benefits. This option would not apply to those who somehow manage to be on welfare yet own their own home.

Actually, the last part came to me during my sleep, so I had to write this blog entry. This last option not only saves billions of tax dollars in direct welfare payments, it completely ends California’s problem with illegal migrant farm workers. The Fed and California government can simply establish some low income housing out in these agricultural areas and each state in the contiguous 48 could migrate a few hundred able bodies there. California’s minimum wage is currently $8/hr. If that isn’t more than someone makes on Welfare, then, we either slash Welfare benefits to make $8/hr look good, or California hikes their minimum wage above the Welfare income limit. If the fear mongers are correct and there really are 50-100K illegals coming over to do farm work, then we can move that many able bodied welfare recipients in to take all of those jobs.

This won’t solve just the California problem, but it will eliminate the labor shortages around the country. What? You didn’t know, during a time of record unemployment, parts of this country have severe labor shortages. While some of these jobs require skills like welding or carpentry (which a few months of vocational education could provide) others simply require someone with a few years of regular school that can read.

http://www.gpb.org/news/2011/06/08/survey-finds-widespread-farm-labor-shortages

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/11/eveningnews/main6764731.shtml

http://www.iseek.org/news/fw/fw7850FutureWork.html

In fact, I bet if the Federal government contacted this company right now, they would step up and be willing to train anyone that can swing a hammer.

http://www.abcseamless.com/index.php/media/article/labor_shortage_in_bismarck_nd/

How desperate is that? A company putting up a Web site willing to relocate anyone with carpentry skills to Bismark. How many of you reading this had a Junior High or High School shop class where you swung a hammer to build a bird house? Good. You can start tomorrow on the roof shingling team. What? You can read a tape measure? Then you just might move to gutters and siding before the end of the week!

The simple reality is, if you fall to welfare without any kind of medical or psychological condition, you should either be training, or, the government should be able to move you and put you into a job at the same wage everybody else starts out in that job.

 

Roland Hughes started his IT career in the early 1980s. He quickly became a consultant and president of Logikal Solutions, a software consulting firm specializing in OpenVMS application and C++/Qt touchscreen/embedded Linux development. Early in his career he became involved in what is now called cross platform development. Given the dearth of useful books on the subject he ventured into the world of professional author in 1995 writing the first of the "Zinc It!" book series for John Gordon Burke Publisher, Inc.

A decade later he released a massive (nearly 800 pages) tome "The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer" which tried to encapsulate the essential skills gained over what was nearly a 20 year career at that point. From there "The Minimum You Need to Know" book series was born.

Three years later he wrote his first novel "Infinite Exposure" which got much notice from people involved in the banking and financial security worlds. Some of the attacks predicted in that book have since come to pass. While it was not originally intended to be a trilogy, it became the first book of "The Earth That Was" trilogy:
Infinite Exposure
Lesedi - The Greatest Lie Ever Told
John Smith - Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars

When he is not consulting Roland Hughes posts about technology and sometimes politics on his blog. He also has regularly scheduled Sunday posts appearing on the Interesting Authors blog.