Modern Day Welfare Essay

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Welfare is a big issue in modern day society. With a huge presidential election coming up, proponents argue that more people are in poverty now than before and more money needs to be spent. Opponents argue that the welfare system is too lenient and makes people rely too much on government assistance as opposed to working for their living. Modern day welfare programs started during the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt established programs such as the Aid to Families of Dependant Children (AFDC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps). These programs were created as temporary relief for the needy, but through the years more programs continued to be added. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson established …show more content…

The six major welfare programs in the United States, Medicaid, SNAP, Housing assistance, SSI, TANF, & general assistance (Elliott par.3). 52.2 million Americans are on at least one government welfare program (Elliot par. 6). This number is way too high. Welfare is for people who truly do not have a sufficient enough income to provide for their family. 52.2 million Americans are not below the poverty line and most make enough money to live a decent life, yet they still receive welfare benefits. 28% of those recipients are on Medicaid or SNAP (Elliot par 6.). The participation rate jumped from 18.6% in 2009 to 21.3% in 2012, and moreover, 43% of recipients received welfare for more than 37 months (Elliott par. 8, 11-12). Welfare is supposed to be a temporary way for people to focus on picking themselves up through a little bit of government assistance. If the government allows people to stay on welfare for longer than a year they have no incentive to find themselves a steady paying job because they can live off minimum wage and welfare. We can fix this by only allowing people to stay on welfare for a year at most. A year is more than enough time to find a job and earn a steady income. Also, allowing people to stay on government assistance this long in this large of a quantity increases how much is spent on

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