What will you do...when your welfare checks stop?

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http://www.sacbee.com/2010/05/14/275146 ... inate.html

Yep, welfare, the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, will END here in California in October if the governator gets his way. First welfare, then child care, then medicare, then SSI? What will aspies do once their SSI checks stop coming? You can't get a job, since there are six highly skilled NT applicants for every opening. That's not counting the unskilled people, like single moms and the disabled, looking too. What will happen once everybody is thrown off the rolls in govt's desperate bid to save itself?

That's f****d up.

Medi-Cal gets federal funding so it can't be cut completely, and SSI is federal so he can only cut the ~$200 subsidy that California contributes to SSI. People on SSI here will still get their ~$600 from the government.

EDIT: I should have read the article before posting. Nothing is said about SSI and Medicare or Medi-Cal. The OP is 50% FUD.

Be careful of writers for the Sacramento Bee. Most of them are very left-leaning. The newspaper as a whole has its own liberal agenda. I know you've probably heard that before but in the SacBee's case it really is true. Don't rely on one article in one newspaper for the truth. Do some research and use google to find additional information about this development. You have the Internet. Use it.

I don't have a problem with people getting Welfare, SSI, etc, as long as they really need it, but there are too many people out there that are perfectly capable of working, abusing the system.

They don't need to cut those programs off completely, but they do need an overhaul.

*They need to have a better (stricter) screening process for applicants. This won't be an easy task deciding who does, or doesn't get benefits though.

*In most cases, it's people's own choice to have kids, therefore, they should be responsible for them. These people that go around and have 3 or 4 kids, then expect the government (tax payers) to pay for them, really bug me.

*They should also put tighter restrictions on what you can purchase with those food stamp cards. There are people around here that go out an get them a T-bone every week, while the people that actually work for a living (the people that support them) can only afford to buy hamburger.

*They should also crack down on people selling or trading their cards for other services (eg. someone gives them $25 to buy $50 worth of food with their cards)

*If recipients aren't completely disabled, and are at least able to do some kinds of work, then they need to do some community service so many hours per week.

First off, not every Aspie in the world is on welfare or SSI. I personally am benefiting from SSI checks at the moment, but I don't intend to rely on it forever, or else I would probably want to kill myself. I don't deny that many aspies benefit from these services. I do myself. But this falls into the trap of thinking all aspies are the same, as a lot of people tend to do on these forums.

Second off, I can't tell if your post is intended to be geniune concern for Aspies losing disability benefits or whether it's some kind of subtle attack on aspies as a whole who benefit from them. Please clarify, as it's often hard to tell on these forums what intentions in written words are.

My head is a little cloudy atm, so forgive me. My main concern is that so many aspies are on disability payments, maybe not ALL but MOST, and that those payments and those systems are unsustainable and will be coming to an end soon. My concern is that the autism community has no plans for the gravy train leaving the tracks. I realize that most of us can't work in a corporate office. However, there are few places that will hire us. Most "work" in the US seems to be of either the office type or of the "service" type, such as fast food or sales, and aspies are bad at both. If we can't work, can't collect welfare, and don't have a place to stay, what happens to us? Do we die in the gutters? To be fair, Obama is trying to cut ALL Americans off, making it impossible for ANYBODY to earn a living in the hopes of toppling the Constitution. That is another thread, however. We seem to be persona non grata in the modern world, and I get the feeling that many NTs would love to toss us in the ovens and get us out of the way.

Interesting how they will cut off the basic needs of US citizens and yet they are not
going to cut off all that is leeched by illegal foreigners.

That is largely because illegals know how to "work the system."

When I worked with a welfare organization, it became clear to me that being "honest" was the surest way to never get any help. We reward people who cheat the system and punish those with legitimate needs because of a technicality that keeps them from qualifying for benefits.

Well, I agree with you, I'm concerned about that too. Now that you clarified, I get what you are saying. I don't know what the actual percentage is, but I would bet most aspies benefit from some form of SSI payments or welfare throughout their life. I'm just wary of people who speak as if all aspies are the same, which people tend to do on these forums.

Are you sure most aspies couldn't do an office job? I'm thinking about getting one of those after I graduate college, so I wouldn't assume we all couldn't do them. If the office job is a really hectic environment, I would have some problems, but if it was some small, fairly isolated office where I could do my work and then surf the net during slow work days, I could do that.

I have a job, pay my taxes, and am progressive; my housemate is a social parasite determined to 'get whatever she can,' and is a wingnut conservative.
go figure.
I was happy when I heard this news because I thought that maybe she'd be kicked off the dole and I'd finally have an excuse to get rid of her for non-payment of rent, but unfortunately she's not on 'Welfare to Work' because she has no intention of ever working again.

We're both citizens of California, btw.

not all of us are fit for 4 years of college, and to get a clean job in an office sans degree is fairly rare, unless you count a phone [soliciter] bank as an office job.

The most that the Governator can do is cut off the STATE portion of SSI. California is virtually alone in contributing large amounts of money to the SSI program, boosting the monthly payout by $150 or so. It was as much as $300 more, but it has already been slashed. Only about 10 other states kick in a state payment, and in 9 of those cases it's something like $10, just enough to qualify for some federal breaks. If CA cut all of the state help, she would get something like $650, which is not enough to pay rent in CA.

its very simple either you can adapt or you can starve. if you can't live without government assistance than frankly theres not much point in going on anyway. I'm diagnosed with aspergers I work in a service job, not only that a commission based sales job. Its hard and there was a long learning curve but I did it somehow and I'm one of the top salesman in my store. I have no sympathy for any aspergers diagnosed person who can't somehow find work. We wouldn't be so despised if more of us made an effort.

Believe me, I have. I got a college degree but nobody would hire me. I got an A+ Certificate (computer tech) and still nobody would hire me. So I went to work as a special needs paraeducator for a ghetto school district, because my mom was the district's HR director. I hated it, drove me nuts. Then I spent 18 months starting a business online, only to have it fail during the financial collapse in 2008-09. I was left with massive debts and was forced to file bankruptcy. Then I tried repairing computers as a freelancer, only to be confronted with the glaring gaps in my education (probably picked the wrong tech school to attend, oh well) so that flopped. I sold software I got for a "great deal" online, only to find out that it was pirated and I had to return everybody's money. So I'm hoping to learn soldering and some other things I missed in my education, and go back to doing freelance PC repair. I have been trying to get a job or employ myself for six years, with no luck.

Fair enough. But I'm still wary of generalizations like this. Until we have data on the percentage of aspies who are getting SSI or on welfare, or what kind of jobs they have (if any), or how many have college degrees, I think we should be cautious in speaking in general terms like this.