Curious about welfare figures

[trotsky]

Had the misfortune of running across a wingnut e-mail today along the lines of the "Do you remember?"/"They're all ragheads and only the Republican Party cares about America." tripe.

In it was an interesting claim, that all those Muslims come to our country and suck our welfare while hating the US of A.

Well, that's ONE right-wing assertion that should be easy to prove or disprove, I would think. All I need are the percentage of whites and/or Christians who are welfare recipients as well as the percentage of Muslims.

I strongly SUSPECT that Muslims, even recent immigrants, have a much lower rate of welfare assistance than most population groups. Many of them come from oppressive, impoverished regimes and seem only too happy to begin working to support themselves and their families.

So, does anyone know where I could look up those kinds of stats?

[MGKrebs]

1. I have tried very hard to find

usable "welfare" statistics. Unsuccessfully. "Welfare" is a general term with no specific meaning. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of programs that could be considered "welfare", including school lunch assistance, farm subsidies, publically funded hospitals, rent assistance, heating discounts, etc. Heck, the fire station down the street provides free fans and car seats! Trying to sort that information into anything meaningful proved beyond my ability.

The thing that seems to annoy most conservatives is the idea that there are supposedly millions of people sitting around in rent free apartments collecting a check every month for doing nothing. The actual cash dispensed by "welfare" is a very small amount of any overall "welfare" total one could come up with. Most of it is food stamps, rent help, etc.

I know that's vague, sorry. The best I could suggest would be to make your wingnut define what welfare they are talking about.

[GOPisEvil]

2. Two US Government sites to try.

Look for Food and Nutrition Services under the Dept. of Agriculture (fns.usda.gov)
Then Administration for Children and Families under Health and Human Services...

The first should have Food Stamp data; the second should have TANF (welfare) data.

[TheYellowDog]

3. Why do we need to resort to

bashing people on welfare? I find that insulting. Everyone has tough times in their life and life can change at any time. I'm sure that people from every race, ethnic group and religion are represented on our welfare rolls, becuase hard times can hit everyone.

[MGKrebs]

5. I have had this discussion hundreds of times

with people. The basic philosophical difference seems to be that they think providing welfare encourages people to be poor so they don't have to work. So, while we all know that there are welfare cheaters out there, we also all know that many welfare recipients need the help.

In the end, Libertarian types are willing to sacrifice the needy in order to try to prevent the cheating, while we Liberals are willing to put up with a small amount of cheating in order to protect the needy.

I also want to say that waste and cheating occurs all day everywhere. It's not just in government programs. At some point, it is no longer cost effective to find the waste and cheating. If your losses are less than 1% for example, you probably can't recover enough to justify the expense of finding it. But the government gets so much scrutiny, no waste is permitted.

Not only that, Libertarians are for a smaller government. When budgets are tight, departments can't spend as much on fraud investigation, so there is more fraud (presumably.) Which the Libertarians then use as an example of wasteful government and demand more cuts. It is a circular agenda.

[DuctapeFatwa]

4. All immigrants have a much lower rate of "welfare" than US born

The overwhelming majority of people who receive any government benefits at all, what there is to receive, and 90 something % of all people in the US living in poverty are children and their mothers living in situations where the father has chosen not to participate financially in their care.

Few if any states offer any welfare benefits to able-bodied, childess adults. In some cases they may be able to get some food stamps.

The welfare benefits that do exist are not enough to provide basic expenses, nor is the federal minimum wage.

Welfare reform lowered the number of recipients by simply cutting off benefits to people.

As the number of people with no means to afford housing rises, it is likely that the US will addopt the Brazilian technique of empowering business to hire gunmen to dispatch the undesirable individuals from the vicinity of their establishments.

Many cities have already criminalized homelessness, and there is broad support for simply imprisoning those who are unable to afford housing.

Although the cost to the taxpayer is much greater, the prison industry in the US is booming, for those interested in a hot investment tip.

[sangha]

6. Immigrants don't get welfare

They prohibited that with welfare "reform"