Essay on France's Welfare System

The United States is often referred to as a ‘reluctant welfare state.’ There are various reasons for this description. One of the primary reasons for this is the differences and diversity of the political parties which are the motivating forces that control government. The Liberal Party, for instance supports government safety nets and social service programs for those in need. “Liberals believe in government action to achieve equal opportunity and equality for all.” ("Studentnews," 2006) They believe it is the responsibility of government to ensure that the needs of all citizens are met, and to intervene to solve problems. The responsibility of government is to alleviate social ills, to protect civil liberties and sustain individual

The idea of the welfare state can mean something different in each and every country. There is an ideal model of the welfare state which is where society accepts the responsibility for things such as the ground work and the provision of wide ranging and

The Quebec legislature made substantial amendments to the Social Aid Act, R.S.Q., c. A-16, creating a new scheme in response to Quebec’s alarming and growing unemployment rate. This amendment is the one, which

The welfare system first came into action during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unemployed citizens needed federal assistance to escape the reality of severe poverty. The welfare system supplies families with services such as: food stamps, medicaid, and housing among others. The welfare system has played a vital role in the US, in controlling the amount of poverty to a certain level. Sadly, the system has been abused and taken for granted by citizens across the country. The welfare system was previously controlled by the federal government until 1996; the federal government handed over the responsibility to the states in hope of reducing welfare abuse. However, this change has not prevented folks from scamming the system. The

The social welfare system in the United States can be a controversial topic especially now with the new presidential elect. For this paper I was assigned to look into two different peoples perceptions and attitudes on the social welfare system. I looked into how they perceived the system and whom they believed benefits from this system. Throughout this paper the identities of the two people I interviewed will not be revealed. I will simply refer to them in pronouns. My goal during this interview was not to educate my two interviewees so some of the information contained in this paper may not be accurate. Throughout this paper the two interviewees opinions will be stated and their opinions will then be compared and discussed. Although the whole population of the United States is experiencing the same welfare system each individual perceives and has different beliefs about the system.

In America today, just over ten million people are on unemployment insurance, one hundred and ten million people are on welfare, and the total government spending annually is around one hundred and thirty billion dollars (Welfare Statistics). The welfare state is a political system based on the proposition that the government has the individual responsibility to ensure that the minimum standard of living is met for all citizens. Specifically, in the matters of health care, public education, employment, and social security, the welfare state assumes all responsibility. According to John Rawls, “In a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice“(Rawls). In the 1840s, Otto Von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of Germany, was the father of the modern welfare state. He built the program to win over the support of the working middle class in Germany and ultimately reduce the outflow of immigrants to the U.S., where welfare did not exist (Welfare State). In the United States, not all companies provided workers with benefits, thus the workers appealed to the government, giving rise to the first form of welfare capitalism.

and in France, the employers and the employees split the cost of insurance each pay period. In the U.S., insurance premiums can’t be pre-determined because of the “risk” classification, and that of different group sizes looking for coverage. The average employed person in the United States pays roughly $6,000 a year, in France; the average employed person pays about $3000.

For example in Germany, 7% of every paycheck is deducted to pay for government healthcare program and the employer matches that with an additional 7%. In the Netherlands it is a 9% deduction that is not matched by the employer. Additionally like in the U.S. employees will often have additional deduction to pay for supplemental insurance to give items not covered under the Government Healthcare program. For example 92% of people in France now purchase additional private insurance. (Berk, 2007)

There are two types of social policy, contributory and noncontributory. Each created as a result of the economic depression in the 1930s. Contributory programs are funded by taxes or other payments payed by all individuals that are eligible to receive the benefits from the program. The biggest and most known one being social security. Social Security is funded by the taxes workers pay based on their income. The current tax rate for Social Security is 12.4% total, 6.2% for the employer and 6.2% for the employee (IRS). The employee pays that out of their income knowing that future employees will pay the tax and they will receive the benefits when they retire. On the other hand noncontributory programs are used on a need basis. not based on if the recipient contributed to the program. The more colloquial term used is welfare. The largest anti-poverty noncontributory program is Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps (Ginsburg et al 415). In Texas, a household of three

A 2000 word comparative review of the ways different countries approach welfare, as discussed on the unit.

109,631,000, that is the number of Americans that lived in households that received benefits from one or more federally funded "means-tested programs" — also known as welfare — as of the fourth quarter of 2012, according to data released by the Census Bureau.( Jeffrey 1) This is my objective to tell the history and statistics of the welfare system in the U.S. There is no lack of information on the topic of welfare due to it being a topic of politics in the nation. Accordingly most information I have is from databases and news reports or speeches over it. However a lot of these areas of information can be biased which is something to avoid. To evenly space the information I will supply you with I am going to split it up into two halves. The first half will be the history of welfare and how it affects the country. The second half will be over the statistics and who all is eligible for welfare.

During the early nineteenth century poverty was major issue, the Poor Law passed earlier in the Tudor period put responsibility on local parishes to pay tax to help the poor. However, over the years the financial strain on parishes became too much and in 1834 The Poor Amendment Act was passed. This was to help reduce the cost of looking after the poor and it was to stop the payment of tax unless you had special circumstances. If the poor wanted help they had to go in to workhouses and work, in exchange for clothes, food, free healthcare and a few hours of schooling for children. The poor had no choice but to go in there for help. On one hand The Poor Amendment Act 1834 was good as it gave the poor free food, shelter, healthcare and education for their children. However, the conditions in the work houses were made so awful that people would avoid going in there unless they were really desperate. The diet was bad, families were spilt up and the people in there had to wear uniform.

From the colonialization of America to the present, social welfare has evolved tremendously. American values during each era helped determine how the poor were to be treated. Values such as Puritan work ethic, felt that if you were not working then you were immoral. Two other values that were prominent in American’s history are individualism and capitalism. Individualism is the belief that one can succeed without the help of others while the capitalistic view felt that a free market system would help create jobs. The Judeo-Christian value comes up in our history as well and says that those who are deemed worthy morally deserve the help of others. These values shaped perspectives on social welfare. One perspective called the problem centered approach feels that it is the individual’s actions are to blame for their poverty. The other perspective is the conflict approach where it is believed that things out of our control cause poverty. This could be an economic downturn or policies that affect individuals financially.

     France, which is the largest nation in Western Europe, is a presidential republic. France is a very important nation in Europe and it continues to be involved in contemporary policy issues. Helping the world as one of the great trading nations, France is a very important trading partner with the United States. Not only is France important to the United States, they are also important to countries all over the world. Their abundance of both mineral and agricultural resources make them a very important supplier of products all over the world. I chose to report on France because it is an interesting county and I wanted to learn more about it.

The Christian-Democratic (conservative) welfare state type is funded on the principle of subsidiarity and the dominance of social insurance schemes. These offer a medium level of de-commodification and permit a high degree of stratification (Esping-anderson, 1990). OECD countries that according to Esping-Anderson (1990) would fit into this welfare state regime type are: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy.