Welfare: Who's to Blame?

Our discussion in class on welfare really made me think and inspired me to write this post. The thing that perhaps most inspired to write this was the talk of the “marriageable men index” and the plight of women and there “choice” to be on welfare because, in many cases, it seemed like a more feasible and enlightened choice to make. Though that is what inspired me to write this article, I will not be focusing on those topics specifically.

The first topic of discussion is the idea that welfare will actually corrupt poor people, or, at least erode their ambition pull themselves up by their bootstraps, get a job, and move up the socio-economic ladder through their own hard work. This is an argument that we hear time and time again when the topic of welfare comes up. I would go as far as to say that this argument ALWAYS comes up when talking about welfare in order to defame and refute its legitimacy as a form of social and government assistance to those in need. The first article link I included in this post is a link to a New York Times article that was written recently and discusses the notion that welfare actually harms its recipients more than benefits them. Many statements from former Presidents of the United States, mostly Ronald Reagan, and others with some level of expertise in this matter are quoted and discussed throughout the article. What I took from this article was the fact that the age-old notion that welfare harms its recipients more than helps them is not that clear-cut and dry, nor should it be accepted so willfully and without question.

The next article link I included in this blog post is one about actual cash-transfers being given out as a form of welfare. This article basically focuses on the issue of how welfare should be dispersed to its recipients and different methods of doing this across the globe are mentioned. One of the main arguments against welfare is that its recipients will just go and spend their money on drugs, tobacco, alcohol, etc. i.e. they will not spend the money the way it is intended to be spent. What this article shows is that across the world who receive physical cash transfers don’t spend their money on those things a majority of the time. Many of the recipients of welfare in the form of cash transfers actually benefit from that assistance medically, nutritionally, with household items, educationally, and with food. Cash transfers actually seemed to helped recipients more than any other kind of welfare. I point these things out not to say that I am necessarily completely convinced of their validity, but to point out that issues are deeper than just surface-level issues and must be approached and dealt with in an informed and balanced manner.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/business/the-myth-of-welfares-corrupting-influence-on-the-poor.html?_r=0

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/welfare-reform-direct-cash-poor/407236/