Reagan once said, "I believe the best social program is a job." Today we often forget the honor in hard work and providing for your family through your own hard labor. This of course is not to say that people who utilize Welfare are dishonorable or lazy it is only to praise the value of providing for yourself. I would even say that almost all poor people who use Welfare understand the importance of hard work, but are only making the logical choice for their families when they apply for Welfare. The unfortunate fact is that Welfare benefits are so generous in America that you often make more money using various Welfare programs than you do getting a real job! Because of this if you can only get an entry level job and have a family to provide for it makes more sense for you to apply for Government money than to apply for a real job.
This leads to several problems the first and most major problem is that it encourages people to get Welfare money who could pull themselves out of poverty on their own without Government help.
The second problem is that once people are in the system there isn't much of an insensitive to leave because they get more money from the Government than they would from an employer. Because of that the Welfare system will inevitably grow bigger and bigger as more people who were temporarily down on their luck fall into the trap of Welfare.
The Third and final major problem with overly generous Welfare programs is that they will eventually spiral out of control. As more and more people join Welfare programs more and more money will be needed to fund them while at the same time less and less people will be paying taxes thus resulting in higher tax rates. Eventually the cost of Welfare will get so absurd that we will either have to raise taxes to a ridiculous extent, borrow so much more money that our country will get a junk credit rating and will no longer be able to borrow money, or most likely both. This process will not happen over night, it may take decades before the Welfare system finally caves in on itself, but it will happen eventually. When it does however it will be an economic crisis we haven't seen since the Great Depression. It is our responsibility to fix this problem now and not simply leave it to our children to deal with a country without a working Welfare system and millions of people out of work after it all comes crashing down.
If we are serious about fixing our broken Welfare system the first thing we need to do is dramatically decrease Welfare benefits so that people will have more of an insensitive to get a job even if it is minimum wage. This also will put the responsibility back on the shoulders of communities to provide for their own members and help them out of hard times. Next we need to hire Government employees whose only job will be to evaluate Welfare applicants based on their need. If they do their jobs effectively it will ensure that the widow and single mom still get the help they need, but the working age healthy man is forced to get a real job to provide for himself and his family.
Just a few if the benefits of slashing Welfare programs would be: Lowering taxes, starting to pay of the national debt, and most importantly putting our country back to work.
I agree completely Zach. It is psychologically proven that those who work for a reward derive more satisfaction than those to whom sustenance is simply given to. This satisfaction is crucial to strengthen the American economy and combat our national debt issue.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Zach! Which of our current welfare programs do you believe would best be reduced first and to what extent?
I completely agree with you! I do believe that government should provide a safety net for those falling on hard times, but I question whether the government has become too generous with the grants, especially when America already has an immense national debt that seems to be increasing exponentially.
A large reason that people are unable to get on their feet is because they lack job skills to succeed in the work force. One-third of all immigrants to the US have not completed high school, so obviously they will find it difficult to succeed. An educated workforce is a successful workforce.
How do you propose we do help people that lack job skills, other than keeping them on welfare? Free, subsidized education? Benefits for companies that hire unskilled workers? Or do we leave them be?
Subsidizing education seems like a positive possibility to me, as having companies hire unskilled workers might negatively impact their outcomes (though it depends, of course).
I am not sure about subsidizing all education, though. Many majors in college don't really provide job skills that are essential to our economy. Not to take a stab at anthropology students or gender studies students, but some majors really don't benefit the economy as much as majors such as math or engineering. I mean, you can literally take courses on the life of Beyonce and memes! Should the government really be subsidizing this kind of education? I think that we should certainly encourage private foundations to offer scholarships so that low income kids can attend college and elevate their economic status, but will the government subsidizing ALL education really be as beneficial as people promise?
I really am open to the idea of subsidizing education, but I am dubious about how people will take advantage of it and what they will use their education for. I also think that another, better step would be to improve high schools and early education. Many institutes across the political spectrum agree that in order for one to not be permanently poor, then they must at LEAST have a high school diploma. Yet, many students drop out of high school at an ever increasing rate. I think that it would be better to focus our efforts on improving early and fundamental education before we start focusing on colleges.
Beginning with early education is definitely a step in the right direction, rather than focusing only on higher education. How do you believe that early education can be improved, starting with elementary school and extending to middle and high school?