Imagine you are walking down the street and are asked to give five
dollars to an elderly man who has served in the Army and worked back
breaking labor sometimes more than forty hours a week for his entire
life. Now, imagine you walk a block further and are asked to give
another five dollars to a twenty-five- year-old high school drop out who
never worked more than a few months at a time, has large gaps in his
employment history, and drug charges. Which would you prefer to give
your money to? Unfortunately, taxpayers don't know to what kind of
person their money goes. It could either go to the sweet old man who
paid in for his benefits or to the drug dealer who has no intention of
ever working, because he knows the government will pay his way through
life. A lot of deserving recipients receive welfare benefits and are
helped to get back on their feet. But, for many, assistance encourages
dependency and impairs self-sufficiency, also making it more difficult
for deserving recipients to receive their benefits, and draining the
funds of the country in general.
There are many types of welfare
assistance and benefits that are taken advantage of. Among the most
popular are food assistance, public housing, and disability benefits,
but there are many more programs. Also available are fuel assistance,
rental assistance, medical assistance, such as medicade, heating and
cooling assistance, childcare assistance, utility assistance, clothing
allotments, TANF, and many, many more.
Many people receive
multiple benefits simply because they have little or no income. If one
person receives public housing for the low income, or rental assistance,
food stamps, medicade, heating and cooling assistance, and clothing
vouchers, then they really don't need much more to survive. All they
need to purchase themselves are the basic necessities, such as soaps,
toiletries, etc. Everything else is taken care of. So what reasons do
these able bodied people have to take steps to be able to purchase these
things on their own? Most are content to let welfare benefits continue
to pay for their expenses. Sometimes welfare has become their way of
life! In continuing to offer these types of services for an undetermined
amount of time, we are essentially encouraging recipient dependency and
prohibiting them from living up to their full potential. Another
problem is, in supplying benefits and services to so many undeserving
people, the ones who need it most and cannot survive without assistance,
are wait listed or worse, are told that certain funds are no longer
available. Those people simply do not get the services they need, and
suffer because of it.
Some benefits such as disability are given
to able bodied people who can to support themselves, but choose not to.
Just because a person has a minor learning disability, for example, does
not mean that they are unable to work. In fact, many individuals with
handicaps as extreme as Down Syndrome or Autism are able and willing to
hold certain positions, and do so. They prefer to be a part of society
and sometimes make more money than they would from government
assistance. So, why then, can't a person with, say social anxiety hold a
position that doesn't require social interaction? Because a number of
recipients simply don't want to. But somehow they've acquired a sense of
entitlement. It's heard all the time: "Well, I pay taxes, so I deserve
to get a check." True at some point everybody pays taxes in some form,
but is it really fair that some able bodied people pay for only a few
years, if even that, and receive a check for a minor illness that isn't
even disabling, while others pay their whole lives and have to wait
years and years to get approved? Another situation that drains
government funds is when a disabled child receives a disability check.
They receive the check because they are unable to work. A healthy
five-year-old isn't able to work either. Why should their disabled
counterparts receive hundreds of dollars a month? Perhaps it would be
wiser if the government issued disability checks to children only when
they are of legal age to work in their respective states.
Likewise
there are other changes that could be made to help ensure that
recipients do not become dependent upon welfare. One major thing that
could help discourage welfare dependency is time limits. If a person
were only able to receive housing assistance, for example, for a set
amount of time, they would have more incentive to better themselves and
become more self sufficient. Naomi Lopez explains, "Enforcing time
limits is important because welfare is intended to be used for only a
short while by people who are temporarily out of work. It is not
intended to be a way of life." (Faherty, 32). In our economy work is
hard to come by. So, what about those who cannot find employment by the
set deadline? Perhaps extensions could be available for many welfare
programs, as they are for unemployment benefits. Another suggestion,
which Henry Hazlitt proposed in his book The Conquest of Poverty, was to
stop out right cash payments, and rather make funds available on a loan
basis. (Weiss, 97). Some may be against the idea, but perhaps repayment
could be arranged based on an income bracket and the recipients pay
back only a portion, depending of the bracket under which they fall.
Yet, another idea that would help ensure independence is if able bodied
recipients were required to, at some point, attain job training or to
further their education. After all, if they are eligible for welfare,
most likely they will be eligible for financial assistance for
education.
So, if everything was the way it was intended to be,
what then? For starters the U.S. could begin repaying the thirteen
trillion dollars we owe to foreign countries. ("How Much?" Online).
National defense could also be better funded, and more jobs could be
created and made available, which would in turn help to better employ
U.S. citizens. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The United
States would benefit from a stricter welfare reform. And if welfare was
used the way it was intended, citizens wouldn't have to worry about
whether or not the elderly man got the money he deserved, or if it went
to the undeserving drug dealer. Neither would they have to worry about
welfare dependency and abuse.
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