Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Reducing Welfare? In Alameda County?

I don't know if anyone else caught this brief article in the Oakland paper. Apparently the county is considering only permitting six months of welfare payments for those who can work rather than the current year. I'd like readers to weigh in on this. For starters, I had thought the 1990s welfare reform changed the system to prevent people sitting on welfare for such long periods. I guess I was wrong there, so I obviously would tend to support this change.

Another story I've heard anecdotally is of people who repeatedly take a job and get themselves fired every six months or so, thus basically permanently staying on the California unemployment insurance plan. I realize this is a separate matter, but I'd be curious if any readers have encountered this particular form of gaming the system.

Incidentally, I don't actually have a problem with gaming the system. I figure that if government is stupid enough to make it possible, why not do it. I actually rather enjoy the fact that those the government considers incompetent enough to require welfare somehow manage to get it together enough to outsmart the government. It makes you wonder who's really driving the bus.

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