Do you think people on welfare need to give a drug test?

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The same exact thing I said for SSI - there's no need to drug test because its not a conditional payment that's there to supplement them between jobs.

As for an employed person - if their job doesn't test and they're responsible users - no problem, I think they have every right. If someone is on disability or social security (SSI) where its a permanent situation; in so far as they're paying their bills and not putting drugs way ahead of food staples - they have every right. If there's a problem where they're endangering other people that's a different situation - that's the law stepping in to essentially rectify a tort.

Then again to tell the truth I think marijuana should be legal anyway, just that if we're going to go by the logic as outlined by the current legal system its best to stick with that. When we get marijuana legalized and drug tests have to eliminate marijuana (unless for very specific accuity reasons in a very specialized short-list) or face discrimination - we'll be having a much different conversation regardless and needless to say I think hair follicle would have replaced urine examination by that point since anything else is in and out of your system in three days.

The point I was making is that if the government can require a citizen to waive a fundamental right in order to receive a service for which he/she is eligible, a service which may be effectively essential to normal functioning, then there is no constitutional bar to requiring one to waive rights in order to receive other types of services. It isn't necessarily restricted to programs involving transfer payments. It's more than just a hypothetical "slippery slope"; the wall has already been breached.

Again, this is an example of the insidiousness of the "war on drugs" mentality. Since we've already surrendered our privacy & our dignity to private employers, we might as well surrender them to the state too, right? The thinking is that drug use being illegal, ANYTHING is justified in the guise of stopping it - even something as invasive as effectively requiring one to submit to a search of one's body by the state. Really, what's the difference between requiring one to submit to a search of one's body and requiring one to submit to a search of one's home? Thus "freedom-loving" Americans have come to accept suspicionless drug testing, ubiquitous police checkpoints, "stop & frisk" (and arrest if there's any backtalk) as standard police procedure, the surrender of fundamental rights, mandatory minimum prison sentences & mass incarceration.

Objectively the "war on drugs" has not be very effective in eliminating drug use, or even in much reducing it. But as a weapon in the culture wars, as a weapon in the hands of employers seeking to reassert absolute authority over their employees (which eroded significantly thanks to unions, labor laws, unemployment insurance, etc.), as a weapon in the hands of conservative jurists bent on undoing the liberal court decisions of the 1950s & 1960s that expanded individual rights, it's been dynamite. These are powerful constituencies, so we're stuck with the "war on drugs" in spite of all its failures, in spite of the diminution of individual liberty, in spite of all the wasted lives.

But as long as stuff like this is targeted at the poor, nobody seems to care.

It's a slippery slope to slavery. Saying that desperate people should be blackmailed into giving up fundamental rights is legitimate, then it follows that it's perfectly all right to force desperate people into slavery. You want to eat, then sign yourself into slavery... no one is forcing you!

By the way, the successful creation of a neo-Wicksellian dystopia with a huge reserve army of labour deliberately created and nurtured makes all attacks on the unemployed even more unfair and immoral than they would be normally.

But it's the Right who makes these arguments against public programmes, saying that the State will use these programmes as leverage to micromanage private lives, then as soon as they take over the State they choose to use these programmes as leverage to micromanage private lives! It's the Right's doing. In Canada, they complained about the government-owned broadcaster for years, the Right did. They said that it's evil because it can be used for government propaganda. Now that they have a dictatorship for the next four years, the Right wing govenrment gave the public broadcaster their marching orders - broadcast our propaganda, that's an order!

Then no one has any privacy rights. Use a public road? No privacy rights. Use the postal system? No privacy rights. Get public money for running your private prison? No privacy rights. Use prisoner slave labour? No privacy rights. In truth, it's about power. The powerful have privacy rights whilst the least powerful are having their rights stripped away from them systematically.

I understand the argument as to why people on welfare should have to take a drug test.

But in reality, it has been shown to cost the state more money.

Someone brought up Florida, which lost about $200,000, if I remember correctly.

No.

When it comes to drug testing job applicants, the rule is that the less it pays, the more likely it comes with drug testing and a larger battery of investigations and controls. Surely if the job is so important that the candidates must have perfect private lives that it should pay accordingly, but naturally it does not. It's about power. The reason why there are these tests is because people who are so powerless as to be forced to accept low pay and bad conditions can be forced into drug tests. Those who have the power to gain better pay have the power to not be forced into such. It's about power and power only and as long as the powers that be mandate a Reserve Army of Labour, a large part of the population will be effectively without rights at all.

In fact, I think that they ought to receive regular psychiatric care, in the interest of getting them off of welfare. That could be as simple as teaching them conflict resolution strategies to better enable them to earn themselves into the good graces of their family members, who really ought to be the party properly responsible for them. If families are not taking care of each other, the system is broken.

I also think that they ought to be made to attend a gym regularly. Getting into good physical condition would do wonders for numerous job-seekers. I had a friend once who was rather overweight and suffering from a bad back from a previous work-related injury: between one and the other, even though he had no trouble landing a temporary job, he could never manage sufficient output to be a candidate for a long-term position. I think that, if he had been made to attend a gym regularly, he would have been able to buck the government's collar for good.

And they ought to regularly attend seminars on good grooming. I'm sorry, but some of the dumb-bums out there seem to have missed some lessons on bathing from when they were two years old or something.

Furthermore, I don't think that coming up positive for narcotics should get someone kicked off of a welfare program. Instead, they ought to be made to seek psychiatric care as a condition for staying fed. If they can't fix themselves after that, they ought to have themselves committed for long-term in-patient care.

Also, I think that people who have more children than they can care for ought to be asked to receive long-term contraception as a condition for staying under any roof that the government pays for. If they aren't willing to comply, nobody is forcing them to go into the social security office.

After that, I'm content for independent, mentally competent adults to be left to their own devices. A person suffering from severe mental retardation or a functionally orphaned child (such as one with a severely neglectful parent) or an elderly person suffering from senile dementia is a different matter.

And I feel perfectly justified in my views because nobody is forcing anybody to ASK for the government's help. The condition ought to be, either take all of the government's offering, or take none of it. If someone is truly too proud to screw with it and play by the government's rules, let them find some other resource. We're running a government, here, not a charity.

Why would that work? Because I bet that most of the people out there getting a check from the government right now would rather work a regular job than be treated like the invalids they are pretending to be. If you are not an invalid and don't want to be treated like an invalid, you don't need the government. Even if it is impossible for you to hold down a job in this economy, there are plenty of options out there. It is not possible for a resourceful, capable person to go hungry for long.

Hell, I know someone with (bad) high functioning autism, really bad Type II diabetes mellitus, that is causing severe ulcerations, severe vision loss and a lot of chronic health problems, who hasn't asked the government for anything. If anyone SHOULD get the government's help, he should. So far, he's been able to rely on his mother BECAUSE HE HASN'T ALIENATED HER. If something ever happened to her, though, I'd take him to the social security office myself.

And there are false positives.

Last edited by WilliamWDelaney on 17 May 2012, 6:34 am, edited 4 times in total.

There's a Reserve Army of Labour that is mandated by governments since the dawn of the Neoliberal Age (1979 or so)... that if unemployment goes below a certain level, 5% or 6% or even 8% at some times depending on the jurisdiction and the types of politicians in charge (right wingers prefer higher numbers)... that the Central Bank is ordered to deliberately engineer more unemployment... So if the government WANTS this unemployment it has no right to complain about the existence of unemployed people and to therefore make their lives a Hell.

Next time read more than just the original post (for this part of your message)

Aliens

Oh...excuse me.

Yeah so nice ideas and all but I don't like facism........especially when the argument is that it's ok to take away all of someones right and control every aspect of their life because they don't have money or are struggling....but that those who are doing well should have full freedom. SO I think I'm going to disagree with most of your thread. And some of us do need assistance we can't get from our families......why should going to help from the government who is supposed to be running this country and helping its citizens entiail being treated like a piece of garbage by them. You think people are going to become healthy and able to work...when on top of their struggles you think it's justified for them to be treated like garbage and have it rubbed in their face.


And what is with the assumption the disabled or others on welfare....did the alienating? sometimes parents alienate their kids to.

not to mention his ideas of actually treating people against their will, should they decide which medications we should take as well?
sorry but the whole idea is beyond ridicoulouss and is a primary source of alienation and bad behavior in the first place.

start with proper realistic education as with any other social issue.

Yeah no kidding.