Posted by AdaGrace on August 28, 2005, at 8:38:29
In reply to Re: slight rant, posted by Gabbix2 on August 27, 2005, at 20:54:21
I by no means intend to offend anyone, and I realize I am probably stepping on toes. But if you will read in my posts above, you will see where I said I live in a very rural area, I am sure the statistics are somewhat skewed from the norm, but certainly more than 1%. Where I work, the unemployment rate is extreemly high in comparison to the state. The county is one of the poorest counties, and having said all of that, I do know from being directly involved with Human Resources at my job, there is an extreemly high percentage of people in this town, and this county who are "able" to work, and chose not to, opting for government assistance instead. I "know" this, because I "know" these people. They used to work for my company, and as former employees, my job is to fill out the paperwork that the SRS office or unemployment office, or SS administration sends me in regards to these employees. I have on many occassions, had employees, single employees without children, who would put that they had 12 household exemptions on their W-4, so they would not have any taxes taken out. I have filled out paperwork for people who have directly told me that they were going to try to get unemployment, even though we had a job available for them. I have been directly involved in a law suit in which an employee sued our company and lost, but not before it cost the company over $150,000 in legal fee, to prove it's innocence. And the reason? We knew that if we simply offered a small minute settlement, to avoid the legal fees, he would accept, but yet, others, many others would come to the surface to try to do the same thing. During this lawsuit, it was apparent that this individual was lying and working the system, and had done it many times before. In many different avenues. The mentality in a poverish area like this seems to be "I want to get something for nothing" And it seems that contrary to what you are saying, it IS pretty easy to do, here in the middle of nowhere, from my point of view. This individual had lived his life "working the system" and once the system caught on, and the assistance was taken away, he moved on to another system. This went on for 20 years. I realize this is one case. Once case of abuse of government assistance. But is it not a little like insurance? It's there to help and protect, but once it is used, the cost goes up? Doesn't fraud and abuse cause government programs to become more costly for tax payers? Just like turning in a minor fender bender causes your insurance rates to go up? Sure, there are government regulations, and yes, there have been lots of reform, but has it been enough? Has it trickled down here to nowhere land? I am not about to sit here and suggest that everybody on government assistance is a fraud. And I am not about to pretend to know everything, because I have never been in a situation to require government assistance. I have only been on the employer side in processing the paperwork. I realize my view is tainted from experience. And this subject is really not the main point I have stated in my original post, it's merely a factor of a much bigger problem.
poster:AdaGrace
thread:546870
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20050828/msgs/547531.html