Would completely getting rid of the welfare system make crime and unemployment worse?

It would certainly make unemployment worse because the fact often ignored by critics of welfare is that many people receiving aid are unemployable. They are physically or mentally disabled. Many others worked and paid taxes for decades but their occupations went overseas or no longer exist due to technology advances. Most of those only receive benefits temporarily until they can retrain into an employable field. The percentage of the so-called "welfare bums" (people who could work but won't) is greatly exaggerated. Most states now limit the amount of time you can collect welfare during your lifetime and they require you to actively look for work or retrain if you are capable of working. The days of the welfare mother who collects for 40 years are gone. Clinton and the Republican Congress worked together to eliminate that. Yes, there was a time when the two parties actually worked together.

Many people survive only because of welfare. When people say the welfare system fails it does not in my opinion. It can provide government housing, food and clothing, the only hard part about it is finding jobs. And that is the question behind everything. The job market does not offer decent paying jobs and only offers minimum a little above minimum wage for already struggling Americans. And that within itself halts all incentive to even try and find another job or even work at all. It is a terrible way to leech off from, and many know this. So much spending is cut from these programs and yet people blame them for the economic problems. Perhaps if companies such as Wal- Mart, Exxon Mobil and BP were forced to pay Federal Income Taxes, and if the military wasn't given so much income, those on welfare could more easily get to their feet.

And yes crime would definitely rise and things would not be good

Crime would be worse, homeless would be worse, sick and dying people from starvation and malnutrition would be worse, but unemployment would go down and the poverty rate would go down.

About half the people on welfare programs would actually rise up and fend for themselves and do what they have to to survive, while the other half either can't work for some reason, or would still refuse to.

I do have a solution to all this, start phasing out all welfare programs and in every city, build a huge complex for the homeless. With the money saved from welfare they could afford to have free on call medical staff, three free meals a day (good food), rooms broke down to about twenty per room, enough rooms for thousands, along with tv rooms and computer rooms. We could get rid of Obamaphones and just have cell phones you can check out for use. And even people who aren't homeless and jobless but are eligible for SNAP can come and eat and leave.

Without a welfare system, people would get up in the morning, go to work, and earn the money to pay for the goods and services they consume. They would be too tired to wander around neighborhoods with Skittles and tea in the evening looking for houses to rob.

No an no war in the last 50 years was.

Yes, when people don't have food they tend to get violent and will do anything to be able to get it. On top of that we would see a HUGE raise in the homeless.

Crime would get worse.

So, what you're saying is, that welfare is extortion?

I believe there is no question about it.