>>101645499How welfare is supposed to work (and admittedly this is a problem to an extent in the North)
You're poor. You might have a job but don't have full time hours/low pay/both. Maybe you got fired. Rather than throw you onto the streets, and into a fuckfest of getting out of a vicious cycle of homelessness, you get benefits and aid. Using this aid, you stabilize your life and maybe find a better job or cheaper place.
How welfare actually works:
Case 1: People have bad education/no training/can't afford training and don't qualify for or have heard of workforce grants. They get a job at, say, Walmart or some other asshole corporation. Walmart at one point designed its scheduling and pay so they paid just under breakpoints for local welfare, effectively using welfare to subsidize places.
Case 2: You live in a former manufacturing or some other industry town and the industry is gone. There are just enough people in this town that state and federal politicians want your guaranteed votes. Therefore, they get enough state money funneled to you to let your town eke out a little longer instead of allowing the town to fail or offering to pay for your relocation to a developing community. People actively don't want to leave because they love their little town and it's really everyone else's fault, especially those dirty liberals.
Case 3: The same, but in a city to get votes. People don't know how to get jobs, what jobs are good, where to get training, etc. Lazy politicians look after them just enough to get the vote and don't, for example, start running programs designed to get people fast tracked into skilled industries in demand.
Here's an example of a fix.
I know a city whose housing program for the poor takes people who live in those programs and helps them train to get into the union that fixes up/builds/wires at the building they live in and other sites, thus getting them into good employment.