The welfare system
- Thread starter Jazzy
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I think it was meant to be short-term, but there are generations that keep utilizing as if that's their career instead of seeking something better for themselves.
I have a relative who tried getting assistance, but was turned down when she really needed it. When we have too many people living off the system for their entire lives, it prevents people who are truly in need from getting help.
I have a relative who tried getting assistance, but was turned down when she really needed it. When we have too many people living off the system for their entire lives, it prevents people who are truly in need from getting help.
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It's a difficult one to balance.
If you give people too much money it makes it ever-harder to get into work. Not necessarily by making it too easy but by making the lower rungs of the work ladder less and less palatable. It's not hard to see why someone might be reluctant to work if it meant a 40-hour week, plus travelling time, if the best they could hope for was maybe $50/week over what welfare paid. The system is effectively asking them to work for barely a dollar an hour, even without considering the cost of getting to and from work, maintaining working clothes and the like.
I think the fundamental problem is one of human nature, which is very hard to fix. If you give people money because they can't find work it creates an incentive to not find work. If you give people money because they are too disabled to be able to work it creates an incentive to find something, anything, that's "wrong" with you so you can show that you "can't work" and get the free money.
Then there's the problem that's sometimes called the benefit reduction ratio. Even if welfare payments don't stop completely as soon as you start working, the gradual reduction in benefits creates an effective income tax that must make people wonder why they bother working. If you're going to lose, say, 25c per dollar you earn the net effect is the same as a 25% increase in your income tax, on top of the usual clutch of federal, state and local taxes.
If it also means you have to trade Medicaid for a commercial health insurance policy with a $5000 deductible, score another strike against working.