by Suspicious Mind

Created on: April 19, 2009   Last Updated: April 23, 2009

Welfare recipients are Americans and deserve all the rights and privileges that go along with that. Because someone is on welfare, this shouldn't lower the amount won in the lottery. Instead, if the amount is significant enough, they should have to repay the benefits they received while on welfare. This should include food stamps, medical aide, and any housing assistance they received.

When someone wins the lottery, the same rules should apply to all winners. Lowering the amount of winnings would amount to discrimination. Instead, one should be asking, how the recipient was able to buy the ticket to begin with? People on food stamps, for example, are not allowed to buy alcohol with them. Since many states now process those payments electronically, shouldn't unnecessary purchases be disallowed? One should only be able to pay their bills and legitimate expenses with their benefits, not buy alcohol, lottery tickets and cigarettes.

Welfare in this country has gone from a helping hand in tough times, to a way of life for many Americans. As a former recipient myself, I used my benefits for what they were supposed to be used on. I stayed on welfare until workfare came about, and I then took advantage of that to gain some valuable and desperately needed work experience. I used that experience to apply for jobs on my own, and once I had one, I never looked back. Many people do not follow this though, and end up being on welfare for life. In the past, when others that I know have had large cash windfalls, the social services department swooped in and took their fair share. I am sure this is also the case today with lottery winnings. And while I don't think it's fair to recoup these expenses from working people, since they end up paying back their benefits in taxes, I believe that a recipient who gets a large windfall should repay it.

Welfare, if used as it was supposed to be at its inception, would be a great program for helping out in times like these. One has to ask however, why do we need it in good economic times? Welfare was supposed to be a helping hand to people who suffered some economic tragedy in their life. It was supposed to be there for the disabled, and be a benefit similar to what unemployment is today. Looking at today's system, it has eerie similarities to how socialism would work if applied to the US. Think one moment about everyone being paid by this system, where they control every financial decision you make, everyone getting paid by one bank, one owned by the government. Is that not a little scary?

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