SC: Southern Workfare Act of 2016 (Statute)

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I worked on drafting this bill and asked Delegate EdgarAllenYOLO to introduce this for me. I put X billion because I was not sure what it should be.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Not a big fan of government intervention in the job market such as this.

     The goal is to train people through performing work that would otherwise not be done for pay. This has little to do with the job market directly, other than to bring people back into it.

I can't support this. It doesn't make government smaller, it makes it bigger.

     So what do you propose instead? The goal of this bill is to gradually replace and reduce welfare. It is no benefit to the South or its people to keep welfare recipients in that state forever.

This is too restrictive on the lifestyles of welfare recipients. The fact that so much of it is mandatory just doesn't sit well with me.

     If anything were to be made optional, it would have to be participation in workfare. After all, if it is to be like any form of employment then free association is key. It would also allow the program to be scaled down, since there would be fewer participants.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I know we talked about this in IRC, but we also need to discuss it in this thread too.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I originally thought $10 billion, but it sounded high off-hand to me. We do spend $38 billion on welfare right now, and my hope is that long-term this could bring down welfare spending by getting these people back into the workforce.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Might depend on what you mean by need-based welfare programs, but I definitely like the idea of UBI.

Basically all welfare programs that you do not pay into - Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, SSI, CHIP, Obamacare, school meals - plus UI, or at least, as much as we could get away with without stepping on federal toes. Replace everything with universal income, massively cut down on the bureaucracy, and give those who have fallen on hard times the ability to look for a job or do what they need to do to pick themselves up rather than wasting time filling out forms or going through interviews at the welfare office. Let people make their own decisions on their priorities rather than force them to go through a one size fits all government system that makes all the decisions for them.

It would reduce the size of government, corporate welfare, and welfare fraud. By giving people the ability to make their own decisions, it would also likely reduce the number of people who are caught in a cycle of dependency on government. If we must have welfare, let's have welfare based on freedom, rather than on cronyism and inefficiency.

     You do make a good case for it. If you could get me some sort of an estimate on what it would save the region compared to the current state of affairs I would definitely appreciate it.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     My suggestion is $5 billion. How does that sound to everyone? It's half of the amount I initially thought of.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     X PiT, South Governor