The Welfare State

[migrendel]

Since I saw an inevitable row ensuing over welfare, I decided to just give it its own topic, and allow it the topic to be discussed here.

As you could have guessed, I oppose welfare reform. I do not believe that a wealthy nation such as this should be even considering a plan which will ultimately starve its most vulnerable citizens because it believes them to be unmotivated.

I understand that many people have deeply held convictions about the nature of work. I can see why this would be the scapegoat of Calvinist doctrinaires, considering what a powerful force the Protestant work ethic is in our culture. However, this is not the only way. Many people place a lesser value upon their labors, and wouldn't view unemployment as stigmatically as mainstream society.

Also, many people take particular exception to use of their tax dollars towards such things. But you're expected as a good citizen to contribute money to schools, roads, and police, and I don't see why charity towards the poor shouldn't be on that roster.

However, this issue is bitterly politicized based upon underlying social currents. Race has been a potent force in this debate, and gender, I think, will be the new element of definition.

The stereotype of the welfare recipient is so well known that I needn't recount it. But it really makes no sense. It is definite that poor people come in all colors, and to inject race into it would be non-germane to the focus of the debate. This could be prolonged by even more attempt to obscure the way race is used as the wedge in any discussion of the poor, but I defy anyone to say it's at any point far away from the architecture of welfare reform.

What really disturbs me though is how gender is becoming a catalyst in the tide of incessant fulmination. Last year, the President announced an initiative to encourage poor single mothers to marry. However, what the President conveniently overlooked is that the pool of available men amongst the poor is distinctly unmarriageable. I think it distinctly better for a poor woman to raise her children on her own than become the abused hausfrau of a drug addict and criminal for nominal economic benefit. When the President designs such a plan of moral engineering, one must wonder if he thinks of the innocent children being abused by their deadbeat father as a result of his affront to feminine independence?

This substructure of gender and poverty has disappointingly won quite a bit of approval and even liberal support. When Daniel Patrick Moynahan wrote his study on welfare, he stated the main cause of the woes of the poor and minorities was their matriarchal family structure. This is sadly misogynistic thought, based upon the premise that women are weak and unable to run a family, and buttressed by an ignorance of how things would really go down the tubes if the biological father was drawn into the picture. The late Senator Moynahan has been canonized as a liberal paladin, but he, more than anyone else, has been responsible for the ignominious harm and aspersions cast upon fundamentally good women of the lower class. Filling the academic community and halls of government with such a spiteful air of cherchez la femme is to me distinctly illiberal.

There is also an overestimation of the extent of help welfare programs do. Conservatives proclaim job-training is offered. But this does little good if jobs aren't available in your community as they are in the communities of the readers of this post. Conservatives say they are being fulsomely magnanimous with Medicaid. But the most essential healthcare for the underclass, family planning, has been shamelessly defunded. The primary reason why these entitlements have little effect is because they are designed for communities vastly different than those of the poor. They, in short, do little more than provide a legal crutch for the bourgeois folklore of self-reliance and upward mobility.

I cannot give any absolute prescription for greater social awareness of, and sympathy for, the poor. Perhaps it comes from leading a call to arms against the shift towards a two-class society, one of the phenomenally wealthy and the desparately poor. Maybe it could be to tell the whimpering generalizers that the rags to riches success stories you see on the talk shows happened either because of rare abilities or dumb luck, and do not justify an apathy for those at the bottom. So many of them would sell their soul to know the comforts of the lower middle class. Possibly nothing can. It's very likely that a good deal of social awareness comes from individual compassion and respect for others.

The only option, it seems, is to humbly endeavor to help others out of the bondage of deprivation by harboring malice towards none and charity towards all.

[migrendel]

Please respond. It took a while to write it, and I just want some feedback.

[migrendel]

Sounds good, Mr. Fresh. I'll be back.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We've had a Welfare State since 1948, so seeing it as a controversual issue is kind of strange to me...

[dazzleman]

I really don't agree with very much of what you said.

I don't think that concern over single parent families is mysoginist.  It is simply an acknowlegement of reality -- that women alone can't do a satisfactory job as parent in a lot of cases, and that asking them to do so is an intolerable burden, both financially and emotionally.  You could turn it around as say that it's mysoginistic to ask women to carry this burden while the man who enjoyed her company makes no contribution, either financially or emotionally.

There is also a mysandrist strain running through your thoughts, basically that in most cases, kids are better off without a man in the house.  There are plenty of bad men out there, and women should not have children with them.  The fact that they are says that there is a big problem,  and it is not mysoginistic to say so, or to say that it won't be solved by giving them more money.

Helping the poor is one thing, but there is constructive help and destructive help.  Many of our government programs, funded by tax dollars, have belonged in the second category.  I would put AFDC at the top of the list.  Poverty is not a fixed condition, and people often contribute to their own poverty through bad decision-making.  Government programs that reward bad decision-making can only add to the poverty problem, as AFDC most definitely did.

There will always be poverty, and there will always be dysfunctional people who, for one reason or another, are not able to provide for themselves.  Some of it is self-inflicted, some not.  Our job is to alleviate suffering without encouraging the behavior that leads to it in the first place.  Liberals generally have failed to acknowledge the destructive effect of entitlement programs that reward dysfunctional behavior.  I think it is better to help the poor to help themselves, but in order to do this, we have to take off the rose colored glasses and acknowledge the reality that much of the poverty is on some level self-inflicted, and will not improve without a change in attitude and behavior.  

Single parenthood is at the center of the poverty problem, and the problem will never be ameliorated without acknowledging that.  The prevalance of single parenthood in an area degrades the educational establishment, leading to poor schools, and leads to high crime.  These are the facts, like it or not, and if we don't face up to it, we'll only be wasting tax money and making the problem worse with every dollar we spend.

[migrendel]

I have a great reluctance in acknowledging your findings. However, I would like to begin with one admission.

I agree with you that the reason why many people are trapped in poverty is because of their behavior. Yet, I will not say that it is self-inflicted. These behaviors are shaped by cultural currents that only certain individuals are able to assert themselves against. All others are crushed by the weight of an idea.

What I find most disturbing is your predilection for a traditional family structure. Rather than making the admissions that nowadays families can be headed by one or two people of any permutation of gender and role, you stubbornly insist upon two-parent, two-gender families. I know you have all that research about other kinds of families being harmful psychologically, but most of the dysfunctional people I know came from two-parent, two-gender households, almost all of those households considered stable.

I know the burdens of raising a child individually can be economically strenuous, but that's why they should be shouldered by government assistance and not a drug dealer who will beat the children.

So, this is a question of open minds and generous coffers.

[migrendel]

I must compliment you, Mr. Fresh, on a thoughtful post that seemed to share my ideals but not my methods.

I do not feel that all men of the lower class are unmarriageable. Some are probably wonderful husbands. However, it is an undeniable truth that the legitimately undesirable qualities that one could find in a potential mate are more prevalent in the underclass. I think it more provident to create a system which has its objective to help women achieve economic stability and independence rather than make them the financial subordinate of a husband that is a risk to himself and others.

I also agree that people are beginning to see the intrinsic injustice of gender discrimination, but some attitudes of female inferiority linger subliminally. Also, I wouldn't characterize women as biologically weaker. What they have are qualities that are complementary to those of mankind. For example, men can lift heavier amounts, but women have a higher pain threshold.

I suppose there are jobs they can take. However, the wage rate is so low that a welfare recipient might make more because the amount of money coming is in approximately the same, except a welfare recipient isn't obligated to pay taxes. This, to me, seems to be a compelling argument as to why raising the minimum wage and shifting the tax burden more towards the privileged would increase the incentive to work.

Also, the middle class is shrinking. From approximately 1945 to 1980, the middle class was the fulcrum of the economy, with consumerism clearly influencing trends. Then, Reagan's economic policies caused a vast expansion of wealth in the uppermost echelons, causing the role of supply and demand to be largely dictated by the consumption of the upper-class, and the poor to be increasingly marginalized by such phenomena as jobs moving overseas and the burgeoning homeless population.

This trend bravely marches on. A recent New York Times article measured the wealth gap as the largest it has been since 1922, in the days of Wall Street millionaires cohabiting with a collapsed agricultural economy and immigrants and racial minorities living in abject poverty. I see the shrinking middle class as a clear crisis, and may be the defining force of the new economy.

I do see private charity as playing a key role. We all should roll up our sleeves and help out. Yet, these good Samaritans cannot do it alone. They need a concerned and well-financed federal government to pick up where they left off in addressing the obscene inequities of our society.

[dazzleman]

I have a great reluctance in acknowledging your findings. However, I would like to begin with one admission.

I agree with you that the reason why many people are trapped in poverty is because of their behavior. Yet, I will not say that it is self-inflicted. These behaviors are shaped by cultural currents that only certain individuals are able to assert themselves against. All others are crushed by the weight of an idea.

What I find most disturbing is your predilection for a traditional family structure. Rather than making the admissions that nowadays families can be headed by one or two people of any permutation of gender and role, you stubbornly insist upon two-parent, two-gender families. I know you have all that research about other kinds of families being harmful psychologically, but most of the dysfunctional people I know came from two-parent, two-gender households, almost all of those households considered stable.

I know the burdens of raising a child individually can be economically strenuous, but that's why they should be shouldered by government assistance and not a drug dealer who will beat the children.

So, this is a question of open minds and generous coffers.

I don't think it's a question of open minds and generous coffers at all.  The facts are what they are, and single parent families suffer from all sorts of disadvantages, economic and otherwise.

If a father is highly abusive, it is preferable for him to leave the family.  Of course, it would also be preferable for a woman not to allow such a man to father her children in the first place, and then expect taxpayers to subsidize her as a result of her own decisions.

Your assumption seems to be that large percentages of men are terrible fathers and husbands, and their kids are better off without them.  This is the feminazi position, so it's disturbing to see it taken by a man.

And yes, I do think that 2-parent, 2-gender homes are best.  There's nothing disturbing about that in my opinion.  That's the way it is, always has been and always will be.  Biology is the way it is for a reason.  Men and women bring totally different perspectives to child rearing, and kids need both.  A single parent, or two people of the same gender, can't do the same thing.

I also reject your idea that people are unable to adopt their own behavior, and just rely on their "culture" to guide their behavior.  Plenty of people from cultures of poverty have escaped by realizing what type of behavior is destructive, and avoiding it.  That's why we're human and not animals; we're supposed to be capable of making reasonable decisons based on logic.

As far as special taxpayer support to subsidize single parent families, that's the worst idea I can think of.  A free society depends upon its members being largely self-supporting.  You're admitting that single parent families aren't self sustaining.  To the extent that we subsidize them, we get more of them, with all the economic and social costs that go along with it.  If single parent families become the norm, who is going to subsidize them?  That's where the liberal philosophy of dependency falls down -- when dependency reaches a certain point, there is nobody left to support the dependent.  The government is us.

[kenhd]

Since I saw an inevitable row ensuing over welfare, I decided to just give it its own topic, and allow it the topic to be discussed here...
...The only option, it seems, is to humbly endeavor to help others out of the bondage of deprivation by harboring malice towards none and charity towards all.

[Warning: OER (Open Ended Rant) ahead]
Not that there aren't people who don't have a strong work ethic, but the fact that these areas that are poor don't have jobs--let alone good paying ones--to be gotten has nothing to do with the state of such families? And I assume you are pro-marriage, and apparently ones for convenience's sake. Should people without money, let alone an opportunity to chase the American dream of self-reliance and a reasonably secure future not behave as human? You know, intimacy.
  And don't say they have to try harder or MAKE their opportunities happen, there just aren't enough jobs for everyone who needs one, educated or not. And of course school funding levels should reflect the economics of the neighborhood, despite federal mandate that all schools meet minimal levels. Well, if single-parenthood and government supported 'laziness' haven't created an unbreakable cycle of moral poverty and illicitness, expecting poor children to perform at the same levels as children whose parents don’t have to try to get themselves and their families out of squalor because people who don’t like that this is a fact of our way of doing business say they should, will. What happened to equal treatment under the law ($$$) especially since education and now testing standards for schools are federally compulsive???
  Maybe we should pass federal laws defining ‘poor neighborhoods’ the same as foreign labor markets and allow U S industries to move into these areas and set up their slave labor level factories with dangerous working conditions, crap pay and zero benefits? An honest day’s dollars for an honest day’s work? already
  Of course someone has to explain to the kids in the affluent neighborhoods where daddy’s job went and what ‘only one pair of shoes’ means.

With thanks to Dennis Miller of the past…

[migrendel]

Did you actually read my post, let alone anything I ever wrote?

[Gustaf]

Did you actually read my post, let alone anything I ever wrote?

It was probably too long...

[NHPolitico]

Welfare states are unsustainable. Human nature is anti-socialist. People work less and produce less and revenue falls and tax rates go higher in a big cycle until you get economic collapse.  Even Germany understands reform is needed, but they don't have the will to institute reform.

[Gustaf]

Welfare states are unsustainable. Human nature is anti-socialist. People work less and produce less and revenue falls and tax rates go higher in a big cycle until you get economic collapse.  Even Germany understands reform is needed, but they don't have the will to institute reform.

It depends on how you define welfare state, a limited one is sustainable. It's correlated to the level of morality in society, the higher te level of morality, the easier it is to sustain a welfare state.

[kenhd]

Did you actually read my post, let alone anything I ever wrote?

  Yes, I read your post, but had to re-read it to figure out why you replied like you did. The reply I posted was a meant to address a general audience moreso than your comments specifically (hence a playfull warning). It is my view of what needs attention first within the question of welfare. You know, my opinion.
  This little thing we can call the de-industrialization of America certainly isn't going to bring even lower paying jobs into areas without jobs now. So what are people receiving welfare supposed to do?  And wouldn't people getting married purely for economic reasons be as great an attack on the sacred institute of marriage as same-sex marriages?
   One of the greatest problems in this country is people who blame the victim...true, not everyone out there wants to work, but how many poor people do you think would like one of those disappearing 20, 30, 40 dollar an hour (with benefits) jobs? We see it on the news that these Americans whose jobs have been outsourced are having to take 8, 10, 12 dollar an hour positions. Wages described as minimal.
  Isn't one of our National bragging points that we are a Humane society? Isn't our President in fact a compassionate conservative?  And while we ARE discussing the horrific realities of living in a get-all-you-can-while-giving-as-little-as-possible economic system, shouldn't we also discuss whether or not our  liberalized social structure and (necassarily) conservative business-oriented political system can both continue to exist?
  And I must apologize if my previous response wasn't what you were looking for, and no one told me I had to read all of your posts before placing posts of my own...

[??????????]

Interesting email I got, I have to type it out the email was lost. Here we go:

At about the time of our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution, in the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinborough) had this to say about "The Fall of The Athenian Republic" some 2,000 years prior.

"A democracy is always temporary in nature: it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning fo history, has been about 200 year. During those two hundered years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent Presidential election:

Population of counties won by:
Gore = 127 million
Bush = 143 million

Square miles of land won by:
Gore= 580,000
Bush= 22,427,000 (it was 2,2427,000 in the original email not sure if its 22million or 2 million, sorry, StatesRights)

States won by:
Gore= 19
Bush= 29 (I guess the excluded Hawaii and Alaska for some unknown reason, StatesRights)

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Gore= 13.2
Bush= 2.1

Professor Olson adds:

"In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..."

Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the "apathy" and "complacency" phas of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy; with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

Thought I would share this email with y'all

[opebo]

Good points there StatesRights.  I would also point out that demographically, lots of people are voting with their feet and moving as quickly as possible from Gore territory to Bush territory.  

In real estate development they say you can never build 'too far out' because they'll always catch up with you.

[Gustaf]

Most poor people in the US don't actaully vote. I find it odd that some of the Reps here accuse the Dems of being Limousine Liberals, and other accuse them of living on welfare...and murder rates are always higher in the cities than in the countryside. In Sweden, where the left is rural and the right is urban, the correlation would be the other way around and still completely insignificant. Also, poor people don't have to commit crimes, rich people either already have or had their forefathers committ them... And, finally, the correlation between prosperity and Bush/Gore states might be bad for your theory...

[Kghadial]

I think this argument about dependency and such breaks up pretty easily.

Your so called 'dependent states'  like NY , if I'm not mistaken pay more to the federal government then they get back.  A Republican running for senate in NY said that. While the supposedly righteous and independent states of the South get more from the Federal government than they pay.

Of course the murder rate is lower in counties Bush won ... they never find the bodies in the field or forest

Not to mention that farmers (now largely republican) get all sort of subsidies and 'welfare' from the federal government. Big Business as well gets big bloated contracts from the federal government , can anyone say Halliburton?

So what if Bush won all the sparsely populated places, remember there is no frontier anymore. People are moving to Bush country because it is warm. What if Kerry wins Arizona, Nevada, and N. Mexico and Florida? what are you going to say then? People are leaving Indiana like its their only hope, and its more solid Bush then any of the sunbelt states other than 'bama (and Texas, but if you notice the one time there wasn't a Texan on the ballot Texas was fairly close) which isn't growing either (i think).  

Don't take population trends and start talking about 'voting with their feet.'  Its also Hispanics crossing the border or the Sea to be in America.

[??????????]

Those werent my opinions, just what was written in the email.

[Gustaf]

Those werent my opinions, just what was written in the email.

OK, then I've been arguing with an email...

It was hard to understand where you ended and the email began, if you know what I mean...

[??????????]

What Alexander Tyler said I agree with though and its holding true.

[opebo]

Wow, long time ago - I even made a wrong-side post. 

My only comment is that the essential difference between the left and right is not so much one of 'caring', it is one of understanding.  The Right decieve themselves that individual efforts and motivations are the primary cause of the effect of economic status within the heirarchy.  The Left recognizes that it is not.  I have no way of knowing which Rightists push this nonsense as propaganda to cover the obvious fact of institutionalized class identity and near non-existece of social mobility, and which are actually duped.

[David S]

Objections to welfare.

1)   Welfare is not charity it’s theft.
Americans have always been free to donate as much of their money, time, or talent to worthwhile causes as they see fit. But when government uses the force of law to extract money from people who earned it and give it to someone else that’s not charity. Generosity with someone else’s money is not virtue. It’s theft. Politicians long ago realized that the government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. As long as they craft their tax and welfare plans so that there are more Pauls than Peters they can keep getting elected. Our constitution would prevent this but it has been largely rendered inoperative.

2)   Welfare breeds more welfare.
There is an old saying; “you get what you pay for.” In the case of welfare that holds true. If you pay people to stay home and have babies rather than work that’s what they will do, and they will do it in large numbers. The more babies they have the more they make, so they raise large families. Their children grow up believing that is a proper way of making a living and when they become adults they do the same thing. That causes the number of welfare cases to rise rapidly. As their population grows, so does their political power. They are able to elect politicians who will give them more goodies at the expense of the taxpayers.

3)   The welfare state puts a burden on the productive members of society.
As an example if you are poor you may be entitled to Medicaid to cover your medical expenses and you don’t pay for it. But if you work for a living your tax dollars pay for the system, but you can’t collect any benefits from it. You have to fund your healthcare some other way. It makes the working people servants of the poor.

4)   The welfare state defeats the free market forces that keep prices under control
Under Medicare and Medicaid, the people who receive the medical services are not the ones who pay for them. That creates a disconnect in the free market forces that normally keep prices down. Medicaid and Medicare were started about 40 years ago. Since then the cost of those two programs has grown 100 fold, far outstripping inflation. On the other hand, one medical treatment which is not covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or health insurance is vision correction surgery. It still operates in the free market. The result is that prices for that procedure have actually fallen from about $3000 per eye 15 years ago to under $1000 per eye today.

[opebo]

Objections to welfare.

1)   Welfare is not charity it’s theft.

Why would the non-owning majority mind if it is theft?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

This is a fallacy.  It redistributes from the owning class to the poor, not the working class.

[David S]

Objections to welfare.

1)   Welfare is not charity it’s theft.

Why would the non-owning majority mind if it is theft?

Spoken like a true thief. This is what happens when the country becomes a pure democracy instead of a constitutional republic as our constitution established. Under your philosophy, individual rights can be sacrificed in the name of the common good. 51% of the people can vote to take the assets from the wealthy and redistribute it to themselves. That may sound good to you but if they can take the rights of the wealthy they can also take the rights of Opebo. What happens if they vote to take your money and redistribute it?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

This is a fallacy.  It redistributes from the owning class to the poor, not the working class.

[/quote]
Working people pay the taxes that fund those programs. Non-working people don't.