Welfare finance data

[Questionable]

Where can I find information about how much financial assistance those on welfare receive, and how much that costs taxpayers? Basically I heard some people complaining about all the tax money we're losing on lazy welfare recipients, and I know that's bullshit but I'd like some exact statistics to prove them wrong.

[helot]

What country's data are you looking for? Also, welfare is a vague term and is not synonymous to unemployment benefits. In the UK for example you can still claim Jobseeker's Allowance if you're working less than 16 hours a week and you can claim housing benefits if you don't earn much regardless of how many hours you work not to mention benefits for those with illnesses or disabilities. All are forms of welfare.

[Questionable]

The United States.

I'm not sure which programs I should ask for. Whichever ones would be helpful for debunking the "welfare bum" argument, I suppose.

[Lynx]

You can research federal programs (like TANF), but welfare is generally a state responsibility. Select a state, visit their government website, and go from there.

[Rafiq]

http://www.socialpolicy.ca/52100/m10/m10-t13.stm

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-welfarelazy.htm

Straight out of my ass. See, even the fucking Liberals don't stoop to arguments this absurd.

[MarxSchmarx]

Food stamps give about $130 per capita per month (80 billion), afdc gives about another $150 (maybe 20 billion), section 8 for housing gives 2.1 million ppl up to 2000 USD a month and medicaid 300 billion. So if one has all the necessities here you can add them up. I got all these numbers from Wikipedia.

Note tho that this is not how the AMerican welfare state works. Even these programs are very much need based (single adults withotu children can't get medicaid or afdc, if I'm not mistaken) Things like the home mortgage deducation, education programs and, yeah, the military and prisons, are effectively social service agencies providing livelihoods to a lot of economically desperate people. Each of these cost quite a bit more than the figures above with the possible exception of medicaid. Then you have social security and medicare for the elderly and a large number of people on disability. When you add up these social programs geared primarily at middle class white people (or, in the case of the military and prisons, providing peace of mind to said white people) these programs expenses are considerable and quite likely dwarf the amount spent on Malibu surfers or single inner city black mothers..

[hetz]

Food stamps give about $130 per capita per month (80 billion), afdc gives about another $150 (maybe 20 billion), section 8 for housing gives 2.1 million ppl up to 2000 USD a month and medicaid 300 billion.130$ a month for food is not much, but then it's 620$ for a family of four. Can you feed a family of four with that?
2000$ a month for housing, though, is quite nice.

[Jimmie Higgins]

When you add up these social programs geared primarily at middle class white people (or, in the case of the military and prisons, providing peace of mind to said white people) these programs expenses are considerable and quite likely dwarf the amount spent on Malibu surfers or single inner city black mothers..Useful infor, thanks. However I don't think it's the best method to try and counterpose one social spending with another - the same types of attacks that happend on welfare over a decade ago are now closing in on medicare and social security - which do go to everyone but undocumented workers. I understand you were trying to compare scale, but I think we should see the attack on welfare "entitlements" in the same continum as the new attacks on the "entitlements" of "spoiled public workers". In fact, there's not much difference in the stereotypes (other than income of the sterotype in question) used to demonize welfare (black "cadallac queens" living high on the hog with food stamps) and public sector worker entitlements (the black female teacher or postal worker retiring with hundreds of thousands in "entitlements"). In both attacks, racism is used to make a case that these benifits are "undeserved" and go to "lazy, ungrateful people".

The rich don't need medicare and social security personally, but even for a lot of "middle class" workers, this isn't enough to provide for retirement alone - the upper end, the porfessionals and well paid workers who reaped better contracts in the post-war era rely much more on stocks and investments on the one hand and company plans on the other. In the 1990s, Clinton and Greenspan told "middle class" workers to deal with the gap between what "entilements" offer and what it would take to maintain the 70s type living standards for workers by "using your homes as collateral".

One other thing to note about assistance in the US is that since the 1990s and Bill Clinton's "tough on crime" policies, anyone arrested for drug charges is ineligable for public housing and I think welfare outright. Then think about how policing is done in the US and how many people are picked up on pretext stops and stop and frisk tactics so that cops can find a dime-bag on someone - and of course who's targeted - and you begin to see another way that these reforms have been stripped from people.