I understand your incentive/disinsentive based argument, I just don't think its true because the data does not support it. It sounds good but doesn't actually play out in real life. With a more robust welfare system developing since the later 1930s, we have not seen an increase in the poverty rate, but rather a significant drop from the 1940s-1970, and it has held roughly steady at 14% since then, although the current recession has caused an upward trend. What I think we get from these various programs is a lack of starvation, mass malnutrition, gross illiteracy, and epidemics that your proposed solution would generate. You would get your two generation die off alright, just not in the way you mean.

Quote Originally Posted by Marlin View Post
I did use the bugs and animals concept on purpose. The driving dynamic behind the process is the same. Poeple and animals are very much the same at a base level, especially when it comes to survival. If you offer people something, such as foodstamps and welfare and so on, in exchange for doing nothing, then that is what they will do. The ants found a way to get free food and expend a minimal amount of effort. I took away the easy to get free food, the ants had to go find their food elsewhere. Its not like the majority were going from 6 figures to 15k in welfare. Those folks will work their *** off to gain their previous life style back and this is a temporary setback. The generational poor have always been poor and are therefore ok with always being poor. To say its not driven by ethnic triggers is ignoring a completely related cause for the sake of PC is ridiculous, the proof is in the pudding so to speak. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity. We have to change their culture, wait the generation or two for the old to die off, and voila, everyone is happy! Ignoring the cultural shortcomings is going to result in the same poverty statistics for generations to come.

As for the 20 bucks a bottle, you're probably right, but if they are buying the Mccormicks at 4 bucks a bottle, they are probably not just drinking on Friday night and are still spending some bucks per week.

As for smokes, this is from Minnesota, so take it as just that:

"Seifert said the welfare recipients who use tobacco -- up to 40 percent of them, at a cost of at least $1,200 a year for a pack-a-day smoker -- could be offered cessation programs through the private Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco."

Here is a recent one from Arkansas:
"According to ATR, ?55 percent of smokers are 'working poor,' and one in four smokers lives below the poverty line.? Additionally, on average, smokers, whose median income is a little more than $36,000, make about 30 percent less than non-smokers.?"

Smoking seems to be more prevalent in the poor communities. Be it education or social culture, I have no idea. The can read the warnings on the pack just as well as I can. I quit smoking 10 years ago when I did my budget for when I got married. I was spending 50 bucks a month on smokes. I know smokes are way more expensive now, that is a chunk of change. A carton here in SC is 50 bucks. 100-150 bucks a month, thats half the rent in a crappy apartment. That would pay for my groceries if I went bare bones and so on.