I thought that the New Hope plan had some great ideas and some really poor ones. I thought it was great how the addressed the psychology of the people they were trying to help. They saw that most found welfare to be degrading and embarrassing and by recognizing people's desire to work as opposed to just slapping them with some money. Realizing people's psychological desire for self worth was the key, I think, because it's something that gets ignored quite often. Also I think that this input and desire to know what the people wanted is what made New Hope a lot more successful than other welfare programs and just government programs in general. Oregon Health care plan, I'm looking at you. Treat people like people and not just a group that needs your money and there will be more results.

Though, I'll admit that the readiness of the conservatives to take children away from their parents seemed to undermine that. Just the callous "oh yeah just rip 'em away from their families, you know, they'll be like fine and stuff" attitude and the dismissal of the trauma it would cause really got me. I know "won't someone puh-lease think of the children!" is a cliche but I honestly thing that from any sort of view, children deserve help. Libertarians are all about personal responsibility but the fact is, children are legally not responsible for anything so I think it's unfair for them to suffer for something they had no choice in and it's extremely difficult for them to get out and change their situation. From a ultilitarian point of view, I think that helping the children out with health care is the greatest good because if they have health care it is less stress on the parents and it will probably help them perform better in areas like school.

But I still feel like it's slightly disturbing that people had to stay on welfare in order to get health care and were so scared to lose it. I think that's just another indication of a broken system, that getting a job but one without benefits was more dangerous than being on welfare. I think that it's ridiculous that there are even jobs without benefits and maybe if all jobs had at least some benefits for full time work, there would be less people on welfare.