They get back on again. Look at that.

Oh I'm sorry, it's 22.4% that are working the system over, not 20%. Not to mention the 43.5% that keep getting back on the system.

I will admit to messing up on the 2-5 years comment here. I misread the time blocks when adding together in my head. The point of this comment though, was that they NEVER should be going on welfare. Better means should be in place to force paternity tests and parental responsibilities of the father.

You all have claimed numerous times, that it's dire circumstances that cause these situations:

But it sure doesn't look like it to me. It looks like people making shitty choices and choosing to be on welfare. One parent dies? Devastating, I can understand how that would affect a family. That only handles 1.6% of cases. A parent is diagnosed with cancer, cannot work, bills are racking up, I can understand that. Oh wait that's only 4.3% of cases.

Let's see, I got knocked up and I'm not sure which guy I slept with last week is the dad. 33.0% Man that really sucks, I hate when life just throws you a curve-ball like that. It's not like you had a choice to not sleep with 4 different guys last week. It's just a dire circumstance that happened to you. I'll grant you that a small percentage of these may be something horrible like a rape, and I would support assistance in those cases. But the majority are just people being stupid.

Forced paternity tests, would go a ways to help with those numbers. Unfortunately there's still the 25.6% that know who the father is, yet still are eligible for additional assistance. Two parental incomes (one probably child support), yet they still need assistance. Perhaps the child support payments aren't coming? Makes sense, and as I've said before we should have stricter laws regarding the father's responsibility. Maybe they just don't make eough money in their jobs? Get another job. Maybe they have 3,4, or 5+ children? Get a vasectomy or tubal ligation. If you can barely handle the kids you've got, don't make more.

You have no idea what any of those statistics mean. You did a quick Google search, pulled the numbers up, and tried to relate them by talking straight out of your ass. It would probably take a 150-page study to adequately argue the interconnectedness of any of those stats, but you shoved them next to each other and went, "Look, see? They're related!"

One stat shows that the disparity between people on welfare for one year and people on welfare for two years is 18 fucking percent. 18. Then the number slowly climbs, until 5+ years is 22% (which is still 12% less than people on it for one year, and proves my original point, thanks). Additionally, the changes in percentage are so gradual that they actually had to group them together - from "less than one year", which accounts for one full year, to "1-2 years" which accounts for TWO full years, to 2-5 years, which accounts for THREE full years, to "5+" which accounts for, quite literally, an INFINITE amount of years - anywhere from 5, to 20, to fucking 60 years of welfare. Those numbers are completely incomparable because the lengths of time have been pushed together to make the percentage higher and more impressive, and couldn't even be made into an accurate goddamn line graph. You'd have to see an in-depth list of people on welfare at one-year intervals to even attempt to make sense out of that and know what you were talking about.

Additionally, and most importantly, there is no account taken for the time periods between stints on welfare. Someone could stay off welfare for one year, or someone could stay off welfare for thirty years, but in the end they'd still be judged under the same statistical category, which is a complete and total fallacy.

And that's just what's wrong with the first statistic you present in the above post. You'd have to sort out every single discrepancy and anomaly that I've pointed out to even try to connect it to the second category. You pulled those stats randomly from the internet without taking any time to even try to make sense out of them, yet you present them as if they're the ultimate proof of your argument. But you are wrong.

Let me connect the discrepancies thusly: A woman is 76. She was on welfare for two years at 18 and 19, then got a job well enough to pull herself off. She stayed off welfare for ten years, then, due to cutbacks, had to go back on until she found another job, which took less than a year. Thirty years later, her pension is revoked from the company where she worked due to its bankruptcy, and she is forced to, in her late sixties, find yet another job. However, the company has also forced to cut back, and she loses her job yet again, and now works for her local department store after a four-year search for a reasonably-paying job, in which time she was on welfare. She is currently off welfare. However, at age 76, and despite spending more than forty years of her adult life off welfare, she still falls into both the "5+ Years of welfare" category and the 43.5% "prior receipt of welfare" category that you so proudly show off in your cobbled, irrelevant statistics.

What should we do, shoot them?

where i live, in AR, our college doesn't have a clinic, but we have a county health clinic(which sucks in most areas...BUT!) if you go in for a pregnancy test, and aren't pregnant, then you pay a $15-$25 "record keeping fee", and they keep you in birth control for the rest of the year...(you have to pay the "record keeping fee" once a year of course)...any kind of birth control you want too(i've tried out the shot, 2 different kinds of pills, and an IUD before deciding what kind i wanted to use)...and they also send you home with a nice big bag full of condoms...i never knew it was such a big deal.

its kinda nice.

Ugh, once again, another way that the religious right messes everything up for everyone.

No no no, we should starve them. It may be more drawn out, but we won't have to pay for any bullets.

You haven't heard anything like that? Have you been reading the replys here? Nobody cares to stop and think of ways to help, nobody stops and thinks of ways to make up the extra cost for themselves. It must be the goverment's fault, right? If they don't buy it for me, then its their fault I don't have it. I had kids when I was 18. You know what I did? I didn't go running crying to Uncle Sam. I found a job that will pay me enough to servive and give me benifits. They really are not that hard to find.

Did you just say people where dying in the streets because of the lack of birth control?

Mirena IUD = $275 - $375, FYI.

Not to mention that some women have to be on birth control. I was forced to take the pill at 12 because of extremely heavy periods that put me in bed for 3 or 4 days at a time. There are medical conditions that require women to take hormones, believe it or not.

From what I can see, it looks like I was responding to the comment that charities and governments shouldn't be helping anyone. I was being facetious when I tossed in the comment about BC. Thus, the .

I have never experienced it myself. I have never heard a firsthand account of it from someone who wasn't trying to push a retarded Holden Caulfield, you-chose-to-be-poor agenda.

Good for you. However, not everyone is so lucky. Do you have at least a high school education? Emotional support from friends or family? Not everyone does. The world isn't an equal playing field.