Generational Welfare

People generally enjoy working and being productive members of society. The positive effects of the Welfare Reform Act is moving to eventually end poverty in America and promote economic growth. According to the 2005 report measuring welfare dependents “Poverty in 2003 remains much lower than in 1996, the year of passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. The official poverty rate for 2003 was 12.5 percent, compared to 13.7 percent in 1996.” ( Gil Crouse, Susan Hauan, Julia Isaacs, Kendall Swenson and Lisa Trivits, 2005 ) States that design welfare-to-work policies that emphasized getting recipients into jobs by shifting to “work-first” welfare systems can modify program rules to allow more earned income,

The welfare system has been controversial throughout U.S. history. It is constantly under attack and is often the chosen topic of political debates. In 2015, 35.4% of Americans were on welfare (Boyd). Welfare is a government ran program, where the government gives benefits to people who cannot afford to take care of themselves or their family (“Brief”). The benefits that the government gives to the people are money and the necessities they need to live a normal life (“Welfare” 825). The welfare system is an interesting topic and has many layers. Although it is necessary, at the same time it is frustrating for many politicians and U.S. citizens. Numerous people abuse the welfare system everyday. People have found many ways to take

A great number of those who reside in New York find the current U.S welfare reform to be very exhausting, humiliating as well as fraught. According to New Yorkers, this welfare will fail them. These simply because they are not poor enough, most of the citizens are already working (De Mause & Lewis Pp 1). The centerpiece of this welfare reform demanded that every citizen to work. There is a need that the state should ensure that almost half of the citizens get public assistance from the government. The beneficiaries should be working for at least thirty hours a week since working for more hours is one of the necessary in welfare reform (Eaton 7)

America spends an annual amount of 131.9 billion dollars on welfare alone (Department of Commerce). So many facts about welfare are overwhelming, such that over 12,800,000 Americans are on the welfare system. The entire social welfare system is in desperate need of a complete reform. In order for a proper reform to ensue, the people of America must combine efforts with the U.S. government to revitalize the current welfare system. This reform would involve answering two important questions. First, how has today’s welfare system strayed from its original state and secondly, how is the system abused by welfare holders in today’s economy?

“The Economic Policy Institute recently reviwed dozens of studies of what constitutes a “living wage” and came up with an average figure of $30,000 a year for a family of one adult and two children, which amounts to a wage of $14 an hour.” (213). According to Ehrenreich, about 60 percent of American workers earn less than $14 per hour. In all of places where Ehrenreich worked paid seven dollars or less per hour, which means those of people who work in those place cannot even afford to have some essentials services such as health insurance and telephone. Since they cannot even struggle to get out, politicians could takee an action; however, they didn't do any works. “The Democrats are not eager to find flaws in the period of “unprecedented prosperity” they take credit for; the Republicans have lost interest in the poor now that “welfare-as-we-know-it” has ended.” (217). And, they also had a catastrophic error. “In fact, very little is known about the fate of former welfare recipients because the 1996 welfare reform legislation bithely failed to incude any provision for monitoring their postwelfare economic condition.” (217). Congressmen need to read this book to realize the problem, and not satisfy themselves by ignoring failures because they have

Changes within the welfare system as a result of policy shifts and by new thinking, more generally in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), have had many methods, but the one that seemed most important, was that welfare recipients were required to do much more to justify their income support payments than before. The foundation of this new idea is that income support programs should allow individuals to maximise their participation in work. Due to the general shift in welfare administration, the number of activity test requirements an individual in Australia must meet in order to receive unemployment benefits, has expanded significantly since the early 1990s. This complex, overly bureaucratic process means that disadvantaged individuals cannot access the income support payments they require.

The Work Plan would work at getting people out of poverty if jobs paid a minimum living wage but most did not then in the 1990s and most do not now in 2013. (Hays, 236) A lot of people who are poor do work and that just is not enough for people to survive on their own and take care of their families. The Welfare system also forces people not working to have to get 40 job applications in 30 days. (Hays, 52) That can be quite a gargantuan task for a person who has family responsibilities but those are not taken into account. A similar problem is the idea of workfare. Workfare is forced unpaid work for experience but does not stop if you find a job while on workfare. (Hays, 40) This obviously takes away time from family but work experience is the most important moral value. The moral prescription of work as the best means of getting oneself out of poverty also does not take into

Thousands of people are signed up to receive welfare in America, this program is designed to aid poor and needy families. However, it has become some people’s way of earning an income. Several argue against and say that welfare is not destroying our country and creating a dependent people who have learned to abuse certain privileges that come with living in this nation.

Great discoveries always begin with great questions. Barbara Ehrenreich asked two great questions, “how does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled” and “how were the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform, going to make it on $6 to $7 an hour” (2001, p. 12). To answer the questions, Ehrenreich embarked upon a journey to discover for herself, whether she could match income to expense as a low-wage worker. In effect, Ehrenreich tested the fundamental premise of The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, also known as welfare reform, in order to determine whether those individuals formerly on welfare and largely unskilled, could earn a living wage on the

The U.S. economy operates on a fundamentally capitalistic reward-based principle: people work, are compensated -- ideally proportionately -- for their work, and use that compensation however they see fit to better their own lives and the lives of those they love. Many people, in their youth, are encouraged to build up a “nest egg” of sorts for use when they grow old and are no longer capable of working as much as necessary to maintain an “acceptable” quality of life. However, this methodology raises an important question: what about people who, through no fault of their own, just aren’t capable of providing for themselves? It would seem absolutely inhumane to leave them in the dust.

A workfare job is different from a regular paying job in several ways. First of all, a client is required to have a workfare job or volunteer position to receive tanf cash, unless exempted. One significant difference that the book explains is that “welfare recipients were given jobs normally filled by city workers” (Mandell & Schram, pg. 174). These workers were “displaced by the workfare trainees” (Mandell & Schram, pg. 174). What was shocking was that the “jobs welfare beneficiaries were filling were now only being paid at a reduced rate even as little as a $1.50 an hour” (Mandell & Schram, pg. 174).

The Working Poor: Invisible in America is a story that takes personal stories and accounts of people lives to describe the injustices that people face every day. Poverty is damaging to both the economy and the people who face it. Many times social policies are created to assist the people who are working but still struggle to get basic needs like food, utilities, gas, and medical. Poverty is a perpetuating cycle that is intended to keep the poor oppressed and discriminated against. Respectfully, this critique will address the social problems that are identified in the book, the major social welfare policy issues, the social values and beliefs that are critical and the implications for future social welfare policy and social work practice.

The Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Act created the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program “to provide income support poor families with children” (Gilbert &Terrell, p.75). The intended purpose of the TANF’s initiative is to end Welfare and to cut down on social spending programs. The impact of TANF has promoted a new way of receiving public assistance and places the emphasis on self- sufficiency through employment. It also pushes the main idea of being married in efforts to decrease out of wedlock births. The primary social problem that this act attempts to address is poverty. Its focus points are getting people to obtain employment with the hopes that once employment is obtained it will reduce the amount of families in poverty.

Throughout history, there have always been people willing to work for what they want, and those who expect things to be handed to them as if it was a natural-born right. While the welfare system does positively impact some families in need, many people take advantage of it. With this being a well known fact, the government still continues to use ten percent of the federal budget on welfare (“Budget” 1).

* The government should work up plans which bans child labor and makes it mandatory for families to educate their child. This can only be done if the country gets rid of its economic crisis so that a person who has a low income can easily accommodate himself and his family with the basic necessities of life.