Do you think people on welfare need to give a drug test?

Post Reply New Topic

Also I was agreeing with you up to a point.....but you seriously think only physical problems get in the way of functioning?

QF(the apparent but ignored)T

Hell no, though I think means-tested social assistance should be replaced with a basic-income in the long-run.

Pretty much...and often mental maladies have a physical explanation that can be remedied. I know this isn't ALWAYS the case, and I would also include mental incapacity with physical incapacity.

I also know someone with Down's syndrome whose parents enrolled in a work program that takes his special needs into consideration. He feels like he is a perfectly, full-functioning, "normal" human being and is treated as same. We don't live in a world in which a handicap necessarily means your life is over.

I don't know how I feel about legalizing marijuana. It's hard to justify criminalizing it, but opponents also make a strong case against it. I likely wouldn't use it if it were legal, and I don't even smoke anyway--ciggies or otherwise. I basically swore that I wouldn't drink until after my son was born this year, so that would be since September. My wife can't drink while she nurses, so I make the choice not to drink either. That's not a "done deal" as to quitting forever, but I definitely feel a difference abstaining from alcohol from when I did drink. Maybe I'll try abstaining for a full year since I don't have that far to go.

I'm sure that first beer, whenever I get it, will be yummy.

What strong case..........I mean I've looked into the reasons for it being illegal and I don't see this strong case for it being illegal.

Also I have to strongly disagree with you that only physical issues can get in the way of ones ability to function......but I won't try and convince you of that as its pointless and I'll probably just upset myself. Also I don't know how a kid with downs syndrome bieng a full functioning normal member of society proves I can do the same.

Oh, so it's fascism now to expect people who are asking to be treated as helpless invalids, which is what you are doing when you ask for government money, to either take their medicine like helpless invalids, or sign their discharge papers and return to the society of healthy people. I think that my ideas are a lot more generous than what we have been offering, anyway.

Have you ever tried to live off the US government? I know a guy who is sixty-some years old with multiple sclerosis. His crappy, bigoted Missionary Baptist family has said, "go die, and go to Hell, you AIDS-ridden fa***t." His social security will only pay for the cheapest doctor in town. Want to know what that got him?

The doctor was such a low-rent redneck, he heard from one of this guy's ret*d Missionary Baptist family members that he had had gay lovers, and the doctor, without performing any tests at all, told him he was really just dying of AIDS, took him off the MS medications, and told him he had 8 months to live.

By the time he got to Duke to get a spinal tap done, his MS had progressed so badly that he had lost most of his hearing and much of his memory, and he ended up with eight severe hernias. The disease slanted his personality so badly, he lost some of the few dependable friends he had, and right now he is cooped up in his TINY little house, just waiting to die. But at least now he's back on the MS medications until another ret*d redneck quack tries to murder him.

Besides that, before he would be allowed to move into the (crappy) nursing home that social security and medicare would be willing to pay for, he would have to sell off his tiny little shack, which would leave him with no place to go at all once he was admitted into the home. With the way those low-rent nursing homes are run these days (the nurses don't really respond to those little buttons!), it would be nothing but a bed to lay down and die in, which he already has and some privacy too.

Compared with what we do to people living on social security and medicare now, the stuff I proposed is above and beyond the call of humanism. The thing is, we can't afford what we have now!

There is no such thing as full freedom in civilized territory. If you wanted to go out into the wilderness where there are no real land claims, you could set up a tent and build a campfire next to it anytime you wanted to. People would think you were crazy, but they really wouldn't care what you did as long as you didn't start any forest fires or set off dynamite next to an aquifer.

Wait, so you think that it's "treating people like garbage" to tell a diabetic who suffers from hypertension to get some freaking exercise? You want to know why the boy I talked about who has his mother taking care of him doesn't just apply for the government's help? Because he brings most of his problems on himself, and he is ashamed. He routinely fails to test his blood sugar. He had a friend sign him up for membership at the Y, and he refuses to go because someone he is holding a STUPID grudge against happens to work there. He fails routinely to show up for visits to his psychiatrist. He uses what little money he has to buy stupid crap he doesn't need. He is literally the polar opposite of the guy who has MS, who is actually fiercely independent, to what minuscule extent he can manage.

So you are saying that it's "treating people like garbage" to make him attend a gym or physical therapy? To show that he's been testing his blood sugar regularly? To fill his prescriptions on the schedule he is supposed to? To religiously take the psychiatric medications that keep him able to function at whatever crappy level he can manage? To actually pressure this guy to, just maybe, give himself a chance in hell of living with a sense of dignity and independence again?

Okay, maybe I really am a jerk for that.

Forget working! Someone who is dying horribly and getting skin infections because he or she is morbidly obese would do well, my friend, to be able to walk across the freaking street without getting out of breath. Someone who suffers from severe bipolar disorder would do well to go a month without getting in trouble with the cops. If these people had to choose between living on the street and actually getting medical attention, they would choose the latter, 99 times out of a hundred.

Hey, I've been there, with a drug addict brother and parents who blamed me for every problem that they...and he...ever had, thanks to the fact that I grew up with Tourettes and HFA that they didn't know how to deal with effectively. I eventually got driven out of the house and lived on student loans for a while. Bad stuff happens to people. I feel like I got off lucky, all things considered.

However, what saved my family and restored my relationship with them was when the judge shipped my brother off to rehab, and he moved OUT of the piss-bucket county that had dragged him down in the first place. Because the judge gave him a choice between rehab and prison, he went out and got the help he needed. He's working a regular construction job now and making good money, he's engaged to a very good woman, and I've got a nephew on the way. BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT FORCED THE DAFFY SON OF A BYTCH TO GET HELP.

You may not like the government telling you what to do. However, my opinion is that, if you are reaching out for help, you ought to take either all of it or none of it. I think that anything else would be feeding the problem in many cases. Not all cases...but enough.

Last edited by WilliamWDelaney on 17 May 2012, 4:50 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Damn, Willy. I like the song you're singing!

again this is all at the (obviosuly wrong) assumption that any drug use is bad, or only addicts?

where does the limit go?
do you incluide all drugs and not only illegal ones?
have you considered the history of said legality or the alternatives to it?

while your view does make sense considering your history it simply doesnt take enough into account to be an effective end all be all solution, just as no other singular act can.
again what usually determines these issues are social mobility and education, the former greatly affected by the latter so lets treat the issue and not the symptom, a practice we developed because symptomatic treatment simply didnt work.

Yeah I still stand by everything I said and am not going to bother with responding to all that right now........and yeah considering excercise alone probably would not cure a diabetic and considering lack of excercise alone does not cause diabetes I would say its treating them like crap to say 'go get some freaking excercise!' But yeah you think I want to rely on this government for help? I haven't applied for anything yet because I can hardly trust them.....especially if they generally have your attitude..........If I find another option soon I'll be more then willing to go for it.

Look, the people who set up these government programs really do the best they are able to do given the resources they have. They don't make them crappy like they are out of spite. They have limitations on what they are CAPABLE of doing, though. And they couldn't enforce the kind of rules I'm suggesting, even if they wanted to, because people like you would pitch up a bitch-fit about being asked to do something for yourself, and anything substantial they tried would be shot down. It's just not good politics anymore to do any substantial good in the world.

Oh? Other people are not as nice as I am. I care enough to scream at you. The average person, if you said you were dying of cancer, would roll her eyes and start daydreaming about taking a cruise, and you would be tuned out. You are just a troublesome part of their boring job, and their job is the crappy career they ended up doing instead of their life dream. To them, you are the living incarnation of their broken dreams and dashed hopes. To them, caring about your crap for even a minute would be giving in to...reality.

In many cases Right wing politicians set up to make government programmes as crappy as possible. US public housing was set up under principles not unlike those governing the establishment of workhouses; they had to be so unpleasant that people would not want to live in one. In Clement Attlee's and Harold Wilson's Britain, in contrast, they actually built some nice public housing because they weren't so mean-spirited.

I don't want to do something for myself?........I don't see how trying to get on SSI so I can have access to help and maybe a chance at improving my life is not doing something for myself. But I suggest you get back on topic....rather then trying to make this about me. I still stand by my opinions regardless of what assumptions you'd like to make about me as a person.

I apologize, but I was using "you" rhetorically. If it's your personal, individual situation we are discussing, that is a different matter. I got to shadow-boxing to try to illustrate my point, and I am sorry I started going off on you. I know you have depression and issues, and I wouldn't want to aggravate that for the world. I'm rabidly bipolar to the point that it looks like I stay jacked-up on amphetamines sometimes, so I'm no stranger to having crap. I don't want to make you feel bad for it.

I don't know what your actual situation is, but I know you probably get more advice from others than you really want. So instead, I'll just give you some encouragement. I hope you can get the SSI to work out for you, and I hope they can help you with your problems. Hang in there, and I hope you know that there are some great people here who have your back. The only advice I will give is this: do not fear the black dog. He is your gentle guardian. Follow him, and he will guide you out of the darkness.

I am not sure you're understanding mine. What I am saying is that we ought to offer more, not less. The only thing the current system is good for is supporting people who don't want to help themselves. It doesn't do anything to promote healing or growth. The system ought to be geared toward making people driven to succeed.

We ought to think of it as an extension of our education system, in some cases: people who have depression or anxiety disorders are a specific group of people who need specialized training for dealing with their individual set of issues. Maybe a community college could teach courses on the basics of coping with clinical depression as a patient, for example. That would include instruction on the right way to seek good care, how to avoid dishonest practices, and how to tell if you might be having an adverse drug reaction. Or they could offer instruction on living with MS.

But the point is, the system ought to be geared toward making people better and stronger, if possible. As it is, it's nothing but a crappy hospice for people who are waiting to die. That's an old Christian fallacy.

in denmark we have more yet it still doesnt get anywhere close to how you describe it, it wouldnt fly as simple as that.
there are some of the things you mention but all on the condition that the person to be treated did something very illegal to drive them into that position, drug use isnt a part of that,
of course for some drugs and some people it really will be the primary course but for 90% of people drug use is irrelevant so why do you want to test for it? (waste of resources better spent other places)

so when i say your ideas are ridicoulous i do not do so out of blind malice or personal need, i do it because it pushes people that might not need help into some of the worst situations life has to offer, with others making decisions for you on facts that quite literally is only a corner of the reality involved.
it is unacceptable in a modern ethical society.

Depression and mental illness in general rises when society becomes meaner in the name of Social Darwinism. Punitive practices such as these drug tests just helps promote mental illness. Right wing policies increase stress enormously and make it harder for people to cope. It increases fear. They worship terrorism in general because they want a population easier to control, They want people in fear, loaded down with debt, badly paid but having to grin and bear it and not being able to resist when they're being told to work harder for less.

Alright it's all good, and some of what you say makes sense...I have the issue of taking things to personally sometimes so it's probably not just you. Also I feel like SSI would just help with getting a bit of financial support until I can figure something out but I see your point about it not really doing much in the way of healing...and yeah it would be great if there were more resources available for this sort of thing. Though I still don't see what drug tests would help.