Welfare in The United States - Research Paper Example

Mariela Haynes Comm 1101/Prof. Palmer August, Research Paper Welfare The United s is one of the largest and most diverse countries in the world, and thus it is understandable that any political issue will have contentious debaters for both sides. This is especially true of welfare; the United States has everyone from leftist liberals advocating a socialist revolution to anarchist rejecting the very premise of government and focusing on community welfare without the artifice of a state to libertarians who grudgingly admit that a government must exist, but think that any government program beyond safeguarding the physical safety of its citizens inherently violates rights. The bottom line of all of this is that every group has strong points and arguments that are valid to differing degrees. But discounting a massive revolution that restructures the government completely and re-imagines a new set of core American values, the welfare system should be at very least left intact, and at best vastly restructured and better funded. It is better for American society overall, and more in line with fundamental American values, to continue to fund the welfare state. To understand the welfare state in America one must first understand a little bit about its history. Unlike Europe, patronizing liberal-democracy thinking and Christian fundamentals played little role in developing the welfare system in the United States (Trattner 5). Instead, the welfare system in the United States has always been developed, cut or expanded depending on economic circumstances. It was born out of the Great Depression as part of the New Deal Program (Trattner 7). The basic premise at this time was that there were massive numbers of people who were willing to work, but far too few jobs available even after the expansion of federal work programs. President Roosevelt essentially either had the choice of instituting a welfare system or letting people starve (Tratter 102). The Great Society period of the 1960s saw welfare expand so that someone who was neither infirm, young nor elderly could get enough to live on through welfare payments from the US government (Lawrence and Strakey 19). The last major change in welfare occurred during the booming economy of the 1990s under Bill Clinton. In this first massive cut of the welfare state, which saw welfare return to the states rather than the federal government, and become a smaller and more temporary program than it had been in the past. At the time of record-low unemployment, booming compensation and a robust economy under Clinton, it seemed inconceivable that anyone who wanted to work would be unable to in the long term, so it seemed that the only people on welfare were people unwilling to work, so the cuts seemed justified. This change has been lauded as one of the best in the history of welfare in the United States, because poverty levels dropped substantially and welfare rolls decreased along with this change (78). The problem, however, is that the decrease in poverty was largely a function of a robust and booming economy, not the changes in welfare law. Though the economic affairs of the US have shifted drastically in the last decade, the welfare system instituted by the Clinton administration in 1996 is essentially the same one in operation now. Welfare obviously has a long history in the United States, but this does not explain the arguments for keeping or further funding welfare. There are two main sets of arguments, ideological and some practical. The first ideological argument comes from some of the founding documents of the United States. The Declaration of Independence argues that “all men are created equal.” The problem, however, is that this is self-evidently not true. Some people are born with a brain that is incapable of accomplishing many tasks whereas others are born geniuses who can unlock the mysteries of science and technology. This fundamental problem has been explained away by saying that this passage means that everyone should have equality of opportunity (Domhoff). Of course a mentally challenged student will probably not accede to the job of a neurosurgeon, but anyone with the talent, drive and so on to achieve a certain place in life should be able to without undue or unfair hindrance. Proponents of the welfare system argue that welfare forms an important part of equality of opportunity. People born into low-income families are both more likely to be in a situation of needing welfare because of long-term unemployment, because of a lack of consistent low wage work and lower educational quality younger in life, and are less likely to have support structures to support them outside of the government like substantial savings, family income or trust funds (Domhoff). The first ideological argument is that to guarantee the equality of opportunity, which is supposed to be afforded to all Americans, arrangements must be made for the fact that some Americans have far less access to financial stability as a factor from their birth than others. The second ideological argument for the maintenance or increase of welfare, unlike the first, has a practical edge to it.  This is the argument that it is legally and morally unacceptable to punish people who cannot be responsible for their own actions.  The most obvious example of this is children.  A society obviously cannot accept children, who have no responsibility for their own station in life.  The problem arises, however, when the state (as America does today) simultaneously believes both that children should be raised by parents excepting extraordinary circumstances, but that it is morally reprehensible to allow children to starve, suffer from health problems and so on (Wilkinson 580).  The government must thus support children, and thus their mothers.  This, however, has problems of its own; many argue that it incentivizes having children as a way to avoid work, which can be true (Health and Human Services).  The solution, though not perfect, is simply to heavily fund welfare hope for the best. The practical benefits of this solution centre around the widely held idea that children are more successful when raised by parents who have time to care for them, rather than spend all of their time working. The final arguments in favor of welfare maintenance and increase are practical, and based on the realities of the capitalist market that the United States, whatever social initiatives in envisions, still has as the cornerstone of its identity. The first interaction welfare has with this system is risk. Capitalism, as a whole, rewards risk-taking behavior, and for good reason: it is risky behavior that provides the best products and advancement for the economy in the long term. The same theory that applies to the overall economy also applies on a personal level. Everything one does in a capitalist economy to get ahead is a risk in some way. Applying for a better job means taking resources away from your current job for the hope of something better, which is inherently a risky bet. Going to a college or training program to acquire new skills is a risk that involves spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on the hope that it will, over the course of one’s career, pay back further dividends than have been spent. The problem is that the current welfare system, which has record low payouts, discourages people from taking risks like taking classes to improve their skills (HHS, Terracol 174). In studies done with much higher payouts (sometimes up to $30,000 with absolutely no regulation) people were able to spend much less time on welfare and earn better jobs after coming off of welfare than they had before entering it (Wagle 326). To pull one’s self out of poverty, one needs to take risks. This both means that there needs to be a social safety net for people whose risks were not successful, and the ability for those on the social safety net to take risks to pull themselves off of it. Below-poverty line payouts encourage people to stay in poverty and on welfare because it gives them no room for further risk. The final question is whether all members of members of American society, including illegal immigrants, add to the welfare state. The answer is yes, they do. Many believe that illegal immigrants do not add tax dollars to the US economy, and are thus drains on the government. This is simply untrue. The Congressional Budget Office, in a recent study, found that between fifty and seventy five percent of all illegal immigrants pay local, state, and federal taxes, and the IRS states that six million illegal immigrants file income tax returns annually (CBO). Yet because of their illegal status, they are less likely to seek out government sponsored education, police action and so on, meaning they are less of a drain the tax pool than the average American. Illegal immigrants do support he welfare state. Welfare systems can be one of the most frustrating topics of discussion in politics. Many people feel, understandably, that the money they work hard to earn should not be going to people who are not working at all, while others feel that though welfare is important people take advantage of it unfairly. Some also believe in the myth that illegal immigrants draw from the welfare system without adding to it. The bottom line is, however, that welfare systems are good for our society. Their moral benefit is obvious: they help to even out the inequalities of opportunity that are supposed to be destroyed from American society, and they ensure that those who have no ability to help themselves, especially children, are not punished for the sins of their parents. They also allow parents to spend time raising their children rather than working sixty hour weeks. But there are also practical benefits to welfare systems, they allow the risk taking and capitalist structures that make America great to be taken on by a wider array of Americans, leading to more innovation, skills and opportunities than would otherwise exist. Works Cited Congressional Budget Office. "The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Government." Congressional Budget Office. Congress, 2007. Web. 02 Aug. 2011. . HHS. "2008 Indicators of Welfare Dependence: Appendix A. Program Data." Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, HHS. Department of Health and Human Servies, 31 Mar. 2009. Web. 01 Aug. 2011. . Domhoff, G. WIliam. "Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power." UC Santa Cruz - Sociology. July 2011. Web. 04 Aug. 2011. . Lawrence, Jon, and Pat Starkey. Child Welfare and Social Action in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: International Perspectives. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2001. Print. Patricia, Wilkinson. "The Selfless and Helpless: Maternalist Origins of the US Welfare State."Feminist Studies 25.3 (1999): 571-97. Online. Terracol, Anthony. "Guaranteed Minimum Income and Unemployment Duration in France."Labour Economics 16.2 (2009): 171-82. Online. Trattner, Walter I. From Poor Law to Welfare State: a History of Social Welfare in America,. New York: Free, 1974. Print. Wagle, SS. "Guaranteed Minimum Incomes Policy - Is It Feasible?" Economic and Political Weekly 33.7 (2008): 326-27. Online. Read More