The welfare system was created before the government welfare programs started. The system was created to help single mothers, children with disabilities, unemployment and, underemployment. The system offers many different ways to help such as: cash assistance, food stamps, employment assistance, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The system has helped a lot of needy families and still continues to help a lot of families. Many Americans have now started to qualify for help from the system. So people will get help from the system and stay on it just because it’s free.
In the article (Why get off welfare) by Michael Tanner he made a statement saying:
But there is also evidence that many are reluctant to accept available employment opportunities. Despite work requirements included in the 1996 welfare reform, the U.S Department of Health and Human Service says less than 42% of adult welfare recipients participate in work activities nationwide. Why is that contradiction?”
As we see in the statement above many people have taken full advantage of the program and use it for all the wrong reasons. Which is Herman D. Sten admitted that “Our society has never trusted the poor and particularly those who have to receive economic help.” Majority of the Americans that receive help from the system are not poor. Then you have folks that repeatedly have kid after kid just to receive more money in food stamps. In the book The Welfare Debate, Robert Emmet Long said “these chronic recipients have become the real source of public concern about welfare in recent years and rightly so” Americans use the benefits the wrong way. Which is why relying on the welfare system should be avoided because it is seen to be a clutch to many Americans...
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...n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2014. .
"The Department of Internal Affairs." Better Public Services. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2014. .
Long, Robert Emmet. The Welfare debate. New York: Wilson, 1989. Print.
Sten, Herman D. "The Crisis in Welfare." The Crisis in Welfare In Cleveland. Cleveland, Ohio: Case Western Reserve University, 1969. 10. Print.
Tanner, Michael. "Welfare: A Better Deal than Work | National Review Online." National Review Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2014. .
Tanner, Michael. "Why Get Off Welfare?" Why Get Off Welfare?. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2014. .
When speaking about Welfare we try to avoid it, turning welfare into an unacceptable word. In the Article “One Nation On Welfare. Living Your Life On The Dole” by Michael Grunwald, his point is to not just only show but prove to the readers that the word Welfare is not unacceptable or to avoid it but embrace it and take advantage of it. After reading this essay Americans will see the true way of effectively understanding the word welfare, by absorbing his personal experiences, Facts and Statistics, and the repetition Grunwald conveys.
Issitt, Micah, L. Flynn. "Welfare: An Overview." Points Of View: Welfare (2013): 1. Points of View Reference Center. Web. 5 Jan. 2014.
Ridzi, Frank. Selling Welfare Reform: Work-First and the New Common Sense of Employment. New York: NYU Press, 2009.
In today’s America, there are many people who would either be disgusted at the very mention of Welfare or be highly grateful for its existence. I believe that in order for welfare to be more effective in America, there must be reform. From the time of its inceptions in 1935, welfare has lent a helping hand to many in crisis (Constitution Rights Foundation). However, at present many programs within the system are being abused and the people who are in real need are being cheated out of assistance. The year after the creation of welfare unemployment was just about twenty percent (Unemployment Statistics). The need for basic resources to survive was unparallel. Today, many people face the same needs as many did during the 30s. Some issues with
The biggest complication with welfare is that way too many individuals have become dependent on the government, when the assistance should have only been temporary. A solution to reducing the amount of dependent families could be to reform housing benefits and social housing. The Government should look at ways to increase home ownership and reduce the work disincentives created by social housing (O’Brien). Discouragin...
Welfare programs are an important part of American society. Without any type of American welfare, people will starve, children will not receive the proper education, and people will not receive any medical help simply because they do not have the resources available to them. Each of the three aspects of the American welfare system are unique in their own ways because they are funded differently and the benefits are given to different people. While support for these welfare systems has declined in the more recent years, the support for it when it was created was strong.
The myth of “Welfare Queens” is quickly debunked watching Odessa trying to support her four grandchildren on $400 a month and Cheri trying to raise a child and organize a welfare rights group while being unpaid. Odessa Williams, once on welfare in the 60’s, was only allotted $25 more a week for having to feed four other children. That little amount of money is clearly not enough to maintain a household and Odessa results to trash picking as a way to cut down on a shopping budget. On page 64, Zucchino depicts what the typical person receiving welfare benefits looks like—it certainly is not the image Ronald Reagan and the media feeds to the American people. In the state of Pennsylvania, only 32% of recipients were black while 57% were white. The passage describes those using the program AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent
Welfare can be defined as health, happiness, and good fortune; well-being; Prosperity; and Financial or other aid provided, especially by the government, to people in need (Merriam-Webster, 2014). It can be very beneficial to people in need of it. Tim Prenzler stated that, “Welfare systems are often seen as providing a ‘safety net’ that prevents citizens falling below a minimum standard of living (2012, p2). Everyone is able to use is if they are in need of it. People have successfully used welfare to get out of their slum, and started to support themselves. Others have decided to not try to get out of that slum, and live off that welfare. They decided that they didn’t have to try, and let the government support them. Welfare is a good tool for people to get back on their feet, but shouldn’t be that persons steady income.
Albelda, Randy. “Fallacies of Welfare-to-Work Policies”. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 577, JSTOR Sept. 2001. 66-78.
The issues surrounding welfare and welfare reform are controversial, political, and difficult to resolve. The debate continues today as to who deserves benefits and who does not. In 1933, President Roosevelt created Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) as part of the New Deal. This early form of welfare was available to those who could demonstrate a need and the ability to maintain minimal assets of their own. It specifically targeted aid to single women with children. It was a controversial and highly debated subject. Even now, many years later, Congress continues to debate and reform welfare programs. It still brings with it the same intensity, controversy, and conflicting opinion it did years ago.
Murray, Sara. “Numbers On Welfare See Sharp Increase.” The Wall Street Journal. 22 Jun. 2009. 20 May. 2012.
From 1990 to the present, government welfare such as income assistance and food stamps have aided the unemployed, the ill, and the broken families of America, but government assistance greatly affects the myth that hard work is the only pathway to success, and welfare provides many negative, as well as positive impacts to society. In the United States, many different welfare systems offer a wide range of benefits including money and food stamps to a variety of people. Plagued with economic issues and a shrinking middle class, the poorest Americans keep getting poorer, and the door seems to be shutting more and more on the opportunity to rise above their impoverished roots. Welfare aims to provide aid to those poor Americans who need an extra boost to keep up and help them in achieving the sought after “American Dream.” According to the US Committee of the Budget: House of Representatives, “There are at least 92 federal programs designed to help lower-income Americans. For instance, there are dozens of education and job-training programs, 17 different food-aid programs, and over 20 housing programs. The federal government spent $799 billion on these programs in fiscal year 2012”. Welfare also greatly affects a large number of the United States’ population, and as Robert Rector states in the article “Spiraling State of Welfare Spending,” “Roughly 100 million people- one-third of the United States population- received at least one means-tested welfare program each month (Feulner). Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) provides cash assistance for families with children in need. TANF was created after the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which was instituted in 1996 under President Bill Clinton. PRWORA aimed ...
?Off Welfare, Better Off.? National Center for Policy Analysis. October 1,2002. http://www.ncpa.org/iss/wel/2002/pd100102a.html. (March 26, 2003).
Welfare can be received for a short period or long period of time. Although there are many people who abuse the luxury of getting welfare, there are also many people who use it to their advantage and use it to help them get back on their feet, using it until they find another job and make their own money again. To receive welfare you cannot make more than about $1000 monthly. There are approximately 110,489,000 people on some sort of welfare. Annually the government spends around $131,900,000,000 on welfare, and that is not even including food stamps or unemployment (“Statistic Brain”). The government welfare system is there to help, as evidenced in the Missouri state constitution: “all constitutional government is intended to promote the general welfare of the people; that all persons have a natural right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness… all persons are created equal and are entitled to equal rights and opportunity under the law; that to give security to these things is the principal office of government, and that when government does not confer this security, it fails in its chief design.” Which in other words, is stating that when the government system doesn’t help you, it fails in its main purpose, to ensure people are treated equally and given the opportunities to have lives that are worth living (“US
When you hear the words “welfare” what comes to mind? To me, the word welfare has always had a very negative connotation. However, after looking further into the concept behind it all, welfare isn’t always such a bad thing. In general, welfare provides financial stability for those who are otherwise unable to do so. Welfare can be very beneficial to a multitude of people with many different ways to make life easier. Welfare in the United States refers to a federal welfare program that has been put into place to benefit unemployed people or just your average lower class person. The most common forms of welfare are Medicaid and food stamps. Believe it or not, a welfare program is not a new idea. Welfare has started long before we were born. In the early days of welfare, the British put into place something called “poor laws”. These laws distinguished who was able to work and provide for themselves and who wasn’t due to physical condition or even how old they were. This was very similar to what President Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the times known as the great depression. The Social Security Act was amended in 1939, which gave lower income people more money throughout the depression. Unemployment Compensation and Aid to Dependent Children are two welfare programs that are still out there today. Welfare programs can benefit you in areas such as health, housing, tax relief and just more money in your pocket. Welfare is not only an American idea. In the Islāmic culture the word zakat means charity. Zakat is actually one of the five pillars of faith. This money has been collected by the government since the 7th century. The taxes, however, still have the same benefit to us. The taxes were collected and used to provide income to ...