Cons on ethical issue - Essay Example

24 February The Cons of Welfare and Charity One of the most common contentions today questions whether social welfare and charity do play a significant role in inspiring development and progress in the United States. Social services and various social programs, which are carried out through different agencies, institutions, and markets, both public and non-government, are becoming harder to describe among societies across the country with any exactness. As communities become more complicated, concentrated, and interlocked with complexities, the scheme of setting up a social welfare has likewise becoming more complicated and systematized (Titmuss 28).

Basically, they represent and act in response to the larger social arrangement and its distribution of labor. Who is answerable to the deteriorating condition of the weather, climate change, juvenile delinquency, the swelling number of out-of-school youth, and many other dilemmas that many societies are suffering today? Our increasing incapacity to determine and link the cause and effect in the realm of social and technological transformation is hence one of the reasons for the historical existence of various social welfare agencies in the United States and other Western nations (Titmuss 29).

These agencies are represented by charitable institutions and non-governmental organizations that aim towards carrying out a community that is less-deprived of the necessities of life. Altruism is, at all, an effort to satisfy a moral emptiness that has been made by applied science. In the last few decades, the programs and services offered by the social welfare as fulfilled by charitable institutions have become more complex and systematic. This suggests that welfare reforms do not necessarily afford people with better opportunities; instead, social welfare and charity are failed political stratagem (Soss and Schram 17).

Hence, this paper will only speak about the general notion of social welfare and charity. The media has constantly reported about the rising poverty rate in the country. As a matter of fact, in 2011, the poverty rate has risen to 15.1 % of Americans, which is considered to be the highest level in almost a decade (Tanner 1). This has started out an expectable sequence of public demands to enlarge and intensify government spending on welfare reforms and services, and charitable institutions. But still this year the national government will only provide more than $668 billion in order to set up an intense battle against poverty (1).

Apart from that, the state and local governments have also contributed almost $300 billion dollars for government spending on social welfare programs and charitable institutions. In a nutshell, the United States will spend almost a trillion dollar each year in order to reduce, if not to completely get rid of, poverty (1). Welfare spending cropped up during the time of George Bush, but has blasted under the watch of President Barack Obama. The Federal government spending during the time of Obama surged by 41%; nevertheless, in spite of all these efforts, many Americans are still suffering from poverty.

As a matter of fact, the figures are not far from the poverty level during the time of President Lyndon Johnson about four decades ago. This is a clear manifestation that there is something wrong with the welfare and charity policy in both the federal government, and the local and state governments. Pitching huge amount of money towards a longstanding problem does not necessarily represent a solution. Government spending through various social welfare and charity programs have neither decreased nor brought the poor Americans from poverty to financial independence.

This has only supported the contention that indeed welfare and charity do not really work, and it calls a time for the government to reconsider and re-evaluate its political approaches toward battling against poverty. The government uses public policies in responding to social and economic problems that the country is facing (Carlson-Thies 123). By and large, social services are the upshots of the present times. It is an overdue retort to the industrialism of the nineteenth century (Titmuss 29).

Social welfare and charity covers different forms of social services that include medical care, educational assistance, and allowances in old age, children, and many others (29). But despite the increased federal spending on social welfare, poverty has consistently remained a large-scale dilemma for the government. Works Cited Carlson-Thies, Stanley W. “Charitable Choice: Bringing Religion Back into American Welfare.” Journal of Policy History, 13.1 (2001): 109-132. Print. Soss, Joe, and Sanford F. Schram. “Welfare Reform as a Failed Political Strategy: Evidence and Explanations for the Stability of Public Opinion.

” Focus, 24.3(2006): 17-23. Print. Titmuss, Richard. “The Limits of the Welfare State.” Web. 24 February 2013. < http://cui- zy.cn/Recommended/mathodology/TitmussWelfareState.pdf> Tanner, Michael. “The American Welfare State: How We Spend Nearly $1 Trillion a Year Fighting Poverty – and Fail.” CATO Institute, 2012. Web. 24 February 2013.