Like the bike you bought after saving lawn-mowing money for a year, welfare reform was the prized trophy of the conservative governing philosophy. We believed that we'd found the vehicle of social mobility for poor Americans, once and for all. No one should live on taxpayer money without doing some work on their own, right? Everyone agrees, right?

Wrong. President Obama ran over our bicycle, issuing illegal waivers to welfare's work requirements and taking the wheels off the program. The fact is, we never won the welfare battle after all. Out of the 80 different federal welfare programs, the '96 welfare reform really only fixed one. A third of the U.S. population received benefits from one or more of these 80 programs in 2011. According to the Department of Agriculture, one program alone – food stamps – gave benefits to a record-breaking 47.7 million in the last month of 2012, benefits those millions didn't have to work to receive.

Rep. Paul Ryan recently said it's time to use the 1996 reform as a model to fix the rest of welfare. He's right, for at least five compelling reasons.

1. America's welfare programs are redundant and inefficient. As The Heritage Foundation's welfare expert Rachel Sheffield noted, there are at least 12 separate programs providing food aid, 12 funding social services, and 12 assisting education. Average benefits from all welfare programs are about $9,000 per recipient. If you converted those programs to cash, it would be more than five times the amount needed to raise every household above the poverty line. We should streamline redundant programs to save money while getting the same or better value.

2. Means-tested welfare programs are fiscally unsustainable. These cost nearly $1 trillion annually. By the end of the decade, welfare spending will rise from five percent to six percent of GDP. This means every taxpaying family would have to make, and then give up, over $100,000 in the next ten years – just to cover the cost of welfare spending.

Imagine this: If government spending were a pie, welfare would be a bigger slice than defense, education, or even social security. This isn't apple pie a la mode. It's poison-the-economy pie with a side of swamp-our-children-in-debt ice cream.

3. The welfare state encourages dependence instead of lifting people out of poverty. Poverty has actually increased with federal spending on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, we've spent nearly $20 trillion total on “the war on poverty.” That's more than the combined price tag of all America's wars. Ever. From the American Revolution through Afghanistan, we've spent less than $7 trillion. These days, we spend 13 times what we spent on welfare in the 1960s. Guess what? In 1966, the share of the population living below the poverty threshold was 14.7%; by 2011, that share rose to 15.0%.

This spending gives people significant incentives to stay on welfare. According to the Senate Budget Committee, if you break down welfare spending per household in poverty, recipients are making $30/hour. That's higher than the $25/hour median income – certainly more than what I make per hour.

4. Welfare dependence creates behavioral poverty. Perhaps President Franklin D. Roosevelt said it best: “Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” To become comfortable relying on the work of others instead of your own work will change your character, and the character of the nation. Americans want to give everyone a helping hand, but hand-holding year after year, generation after generation, patronizes, corrodes, entraps. In the words of welfare policy experts Robert Rector and Jennifer Marshall writing in National Affairs:

Material poverty has been replaced by a far deeper “behavioral poverty” — a vicious cycle of ***** childbearing, social dysfunction, and welfare dependency in poor communities. Even as the welfare state has improved the material comfort of low-income Americans by transferring enormous financial resources to them, it has exacerbated these behavioral problems. The result has been the disintegration of the work ethic, family structure, and social fabric of large segments of the American population, which has in turn created a new dependency class.

Is this the America we want? It is not compassionate to leave a whole class of people in perpetual dependence. Behavioral poverty cuts off millions of citizens from a chance at American opportunity, destroying the virtues necessary to sustain oneself. My generation has seen the effects of behavioral poverty – in D.C., Detroit, or my hometown, Cleveland. Whole neighborhoods rot. To many, this cycle of dependence indicts the principles of American society as inherently unfair.

5. Work requirements promote individual responsibility and reduce poverty. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) work requirements slashed welfare caseloads by nearly 60 percent. Poverty among all single mothers fell 30 percent. About 3 million fewer children lived in poverty in 2003 than in 1995.

California highway buzzes and the searing sun shines on the beach towel as I stroke Walt Whitman's beard
Transcendent and alive, but dead, still dead as my brother and his brothers, the 19th Century posse
We know the world better than them but are less learned, as the schools are a failure
and the business is us, but not the same as the industrial business of yesteryear
We are here to consume, consume and as we're dying of consumption , we consume more.

Alcohol, cars, phones and laptops, tablets, tablets, pills and more pills, condoms, liquor, ***** and brews, women, men, more women, more men, razors, lasers, heaters, coolers, snacks, rucksacks, ex lax and nick-knacks. They sell us dreams and nightmares, movies and bomb scares, they sell us news by the hour and power as they exert their own power. They give us gifts and incentives, draw us in so they they can stick us with a pin or a bracelet, and we too can sell to our friends on group hangs or as we stand still listening to our favourite bands. Billboards scream for our attention, or the buses stop at the intersection, and we're supposed to open our little phone and buy whatever is advertised. Why? Y?

They call us the Y generation too, why? Perhaps we ask the question  too much, perhaps we haven't asked enough. Perhaps the X generation simply ponder why we are so consumed with the technology they feed us. Why? Why must they question us, when we are the next great generation, we do laugh at that too. The internet is the new religion, bow down before Google and drink from the pixelated chalice, my child. Any question one could need answering is answered by the internet. The Bible is irrelevant in our society, burn it and download a bible app on the latest smartphone, the Qur'an too, hell, try the Tanakh, the Smriti and the Pāli Canon, for we are enlightened ******* It. And we want more.

[email protected]
RE:PARTY TONIGHT!!!!!

Hey yo mane some warehouse downtown has this dubstep DJ from like ******* Iraq or some ****. *** down, gonna be hella ******* there
xo

What music do you like?
All of it
Films?
All of them
TV
I don't own one but I watched every episode of The Wire on Netflix
...
I am a pansexual being riding the ever changing dunes of the Sahara, like so many great poets before me.

Digital immigrants and immigrants of empathy too
How serious do you believe us to be?
I am not using sarcasm as a form of wit for I have no wit.
Stoicism and rejection of education, employment and training.
We surly are the neatest generation, how can we make a mess if we are not awake most days?
Save for the endless party that is life, as we throw used glow sticks at women we desire
and ***** over car windows before getting blown on the lawn

lol dat wuz cray last nite
xo

Die young poets we have no desire for your kind, pacify us with Kerouac and Ginsberg so that we may emulate intelligence and impair the senses, for we care not about the real world either
Our world is the only one that exists, yours will soon crumble
We have trained for the end with extensive views of zombie flicks in coffee houses

@SomeFacelessJerk Follow for follow

Hey OP, you are a ******.
Why yes, yes I am. Does that bother you.
No, OP. You see I too am a ******.

Do away with your hurtful words they have no meaning today
White man died and lost control of his precious dictionary
We are here to save language by replacing all vowels with X's and O's
We are here to consume and in turn consummate this marriage,
the marriage of ignorance and bliss.

You delay my salary and incentives
But expect me to stay positive
On work, do you want me to pace up
But you yourself don't pace up
When it comes to paying my dues
Fed up am I, with you!

You delay my salary and incentives
But my work, am I supposed to love
You keep me on tenterhooks
How can you be in my good books?

You delay my salary and incentives
However, the revenue, am I expected to drive
This is so ******* unfair
But you don't seem to care!!

You delay my salary and incentives
Lame reasons, do you give
Seriously, do you expect me to buy them?
Act, I will not, according to your whims!!

You delay my salary and incentives
With respect to the latter, has it been months
All this while, have I been very patient
Always bearing the brunt
Of your constant nagging and scolding
However, is there a limit to everything
The exact words of my grandfather
Now, have I reached the end of my tether
Always, do you want me to deliver
Now, it's time for YOU to deliver
That's all I can say!!

Fiat money and central banking
     Bring about perverse incentives
          Such as stealing via debasement,
               Economic manipulation & distortion
                    To benefit those in power and control, &
                         Seeking unearned money (seigniorage)
                              Therefore
                         We need a system with only aligned
                     Incentives, where rewards are based
                On work and value delivered to others,
           Price signals are true and accurate, &
      Assets are assets, & money is money
  Bitcoin establishes aligned incentives

This routine,
Swallowing us whole
Both of us tangled within
It's the same rotating circle
Words are just said
To keep peace in between turns
We're looking for other incentives
To keep insanity at bay

This is the Genesis.
Incentives to diminish menaces.
Endlessness.
Will I finish this?
Infinite questions of aggression, are expressed when the deception of obsessions are a progression.
Infinite diligent stimulant from an incident, but im innocent.
And still I vent...

It's always good to make friends, wherever you go
After all, every new place has its set of challenges
And in order to overcome them
It's better to have someone at your side
As they say, you don't have to do everything on your own
Well, making friends may not seem all that difficult
But keeping them is a different matter altogether
There must be some common ground
The place where you meet
The company where you work
The college where you study
Your hobbies, passions etc.
And I can go on and on
However, the point is
You and your friend must be compatible with each other
Being an introvert, I don't have many friends
However, the few I do have
Can be entrusted with almost anything in the world
This poem is about one of them
We met as colleagues, six years ago
And hit it off almost from the word go
Thanks to a few common interests
Such as cricket, movies, food etc.
We even went to a storytelling event
Where he was given a chance to take the mic
And spoke about me and my passion for trains
What I particularly like about him
Is that he is very easygoing
And rarely gets angry or upset
Even when dealing with cranky clients
And he had a whole lot of them
Every client was a story in itself
We would bond while trashing these clients
Often over a cup of cutting chai
Down at the cafeteria
As the months sped by
We grew closer
Finding more and more common ground
In the form of issues we faced at work
Especially the frequent salary delays
And non-payment of incentives
We always had lunch together
Except when either of us worked from home
Eventually, my friend shifted to Pune
But we stayed in touch on a regular basis
In fact, we met on at least five occasions
And continue to speak over the phone
Almost on a monthly basis
Even after he got married, about a year ago
He, in particular, makes it a point
To call me every now and then
And we exchange news
About our respective lives
This close friend of mine is proof
That you don't necessarily have to keep meeting people
In order to maintain friendships
Of course, it is always good to meet your friends
But sometimes, all you may need
If you're missing someone
Is a simple phone call
And in this case
Our calls are usually long
Long enough to ensure
That we sustain our friendship, no matter what

Your inferior intellect disgusts me. While I have some trouble verbalizing my own, I know that it is far more than what you display. Your immature actions and juvenile conduct will get you into trouble some day; real trouble. You may not even notice, because you are too stubborn to face the fact that you aren’t a goddess. You have bad intentions and wicked tongue. Your fuel is jealousy and your eyes are blind. But we’re both growing older, and one day you will realize that everything I’ve done has been good.  Or maybe you won’t realize - if not, I will pity you, but I will have no mercy. We all have a choice. We all choose who we want to be, and I’m not disregarding DNA; I know it plays a role, it plays a strong one, but we feed on experience, and I expected better from you--of all people.

You’ve been put through the same evil that you construct. Why? I only want the best for both of us, for everyone. You seem to differ. I’m not sure if it’s selfishness, envy, or determination to make a point, but it’s something. I’m not sure of its irrelevance to our confrontation, but I sure as hell know that it is irrelevant to anything else. So, why? You know as well as I do that we all have our different skill-sets, different opinions, and different incentives, so if you’re trying to prove something, stop. You know the human can’t be tamed once his or her mind is set in place. You’re apparently set in stone. Maybe I am too, so do you understand now? You can’t change my mind. I will do as I please, just as you will. We are a lot alike, you and I. The only difference: yin vs. yang. And you know I’m right. Your inadequate hands, reaching out, just so someone will notice. Well I notice, okay? But I will not submit. Neither will he. So, please stop. I understand your apathy and your care, but is it genuine or is it all a lie? After all these years, I feel that I should know the truth, but now I feel that I don’t know you at all.

I’ve watched the change creep up your spine, and I don’t blame you, completely. I know the storm has been rough, but don’t you know that it covers the whole sky? We’re all getting rained on and all you seem to care about is your own umbrella. Sure, you may hand it to me every once in a while so I have a bit of cover, but I know that you’ll be retrieving it soon, just like always. I just hope that some day the sun comes out for you, because I want that for you. I want you to be okay. I want you to be happy. I  want to be happy. I want your interference to cease. From one empath to another: I know you can feel it. You know you can be better. I’m not sure if it’s fear of failure or simple carelessness that’s getting in the way, but something is. You can control it. I would never intentionally disrespect you; you’re almost like a sister to me, an older sister. So start acting older. You have a substantial amount of potential in this life. All you have to do is let go of all the negativity and you’ll be set free. Just like me. I love you, so please understand.