North Dakota Nesties
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: Views on drug testing welfare recipients
I am very much against drug testing. It sounds like a good idea, but logistically it would just be a nightmare.
The last study I remember seeing said only something like 4% of the people on welfare are actually abusing the system. I don't remember how they got that number, but I know the vast majority of people receiving aid are off of it within the first two years. The cost of testing everyone would greatly outweigh the savings. Plus, to be effective, testing would have to be done (randomly) at different intervals WHILE they're receiving aid, and not just in the beginning, which also greatly impacts the cost. It's just not feasible.
TANF is temporary aid for needy FAMILIES -- ie, you have to have kids to get it. So if the parents are losers who fail the test, then what happens to the kids? It's easy to say the kids need to be taken out of that situation, and I agree, but right now our foster system is so overrun that it would be basically impossible. Refusing aid would just mean that those kids would go hungry. And if you look at the things that welfare money (eta SNAP) can be used for (at least in my state) beer & cigarettes aren't included (actually, they're specifically excluded). Honestly, these shitty parents would probably use their money to buy beer & cigs if they didn't get aid and just let their kids starve. I would much rather them get the aid and know that at least their kids might get some food that day because of it.
I think the problem with welfare is that most people think of the abusers, when in reality the vast majority of people accepting the aid are legit and are using it for what it is meant for -- temporary aid in a time of need. It's just that the abusers give the whole system a bad name.
I would love to see the SNAP (food stamp) program overhauled to be more like WIC where there are only specific things that you can buy.
But, then I read something about homeless people that made me realize that it would be awful for them. Most shelters are closed during the day, so they use their SNAP money to buy food during the day. But, the shelters don't allow them to bring food in at night, so they have to buy small quantities. They also have to buy things that are ready to eat since they have nowhere to cook food. And of course they can't buy something like a gallon of milk or cheese because they would have nowhere to store it. So, if we did overhaul the SNAP program we would have to take that into account.
Really, I don't know the solution. The whole system needs to be fixed (but honestly it has gotten a lot better in the last 15 years or so). It's just too easy to think of these quick fixes like drug testing without thinking about what the consequences of them are. It's too bad that we don't have something better for our poor population. Like someone said, education is the biggest problem.