This week was very informative for me as why rewarding what we don’t want exist everywhere.
Why some peoples are trying to beat the system every single day? Examples below show that we can blame than all the time.
The example that make me think about that is the welfare system. I have been in contact with families where everyone from grandfather to grandson everybody was on welfare. At this time I was new postdoc in a city where my wife couldn’t work we were waiting for my son, my friend who was on welfare had more money than me at the end of the fiscal year because the guy and his wife were receiving welfare so they had daycare for $7/day with government child support of $250./kids each month. I had day care fees of $25/day. I am not saying that all the pregnant women who can’t work should receive allowance from the government but I didn’t want my wife to go on welfare because I chosed to immigrate in Canada not to received welfare but to set example for my family.
An other example I have these day is that : being posted here in US from Canada on NATO visa, my dependences can’t work without US authorization. When we moved from Canada to here in US all my dependents quit their jobs. In this kind of situation people move on employment Insurance (EI) (if the moving is within Canada,) until their get a job, After 6 months they haven’t received anything from EI, they argued that my dependents have not received work authorization. They have applied for that 2 weeks after we came here, that mean 6 months ago. After they received the work authorization last week EI administration send my dependents a letter stating that they don’t have enough work time in bank (800hrs) to receive EI , (my wife has been working since 2005) but she had a surgery on February and she stopped working for 1month and received 1 week compensation from EI. From February to June when we moved she had not work for 800hrs so she was denied to received EI.
If she had not retuned to work on February 2011 she would had received EI from February 20011 to February 2012.
The posting is considered as duty and now the other family member are punish because they following me. Now they want us to try to have a postgrad so that we can be better at what we do but they punish part of the family for being supportive. The other alternative for my wife was to stay in Canada and ask for welfare so that she can take care of the kids.
So all the system was designed in such a way the reward goes to what they are not hoping for.
