Lessons From Europe On Welfare, Dependency, And Self-Reliance

Townhall Finance.com ^ | May 31, 2018 | Daniel J. Mitchell

[Kaslin]

America has a major dependency problem. In recent decades, there’s been a significant increase in the number of working-age adults relying on handouts.

This is bad news for poor people and bad news for taxpayers. But it’s also bad news for the nation since it reflects an erosion of societal capital.

For all intents and purposes, people are being paid not to be productive.

Guided by the spirit of Calvin Coolidge, we need to reform the welfare state.

Professor Dorfman of the University of Georgia, in a column for Forbes, pinpoints the core problem.

The first failure of government welfare programs is to favor help with current consumption while placing almost no emphasis on job training or anything else that might allow today’s poor people to become self-sufficient in the future. …It is the classic story of giving a man a fish or teaching him how to fish. Government welfare programs hand out lots of fish, but never seem to teach people how to fish for themselves. The problem is not a lack of job training programs, but rather the fact that the job training programs fail to help people. In a study for ProPublica, Amy Goldstein documents that people who lost their jobs and participated in a federal job training program were less likely to be employed afterward than those who lost their jobs and did not receive any job training. That is, the job training made people worse off instead of better. …Right now, the government cannot teach anyone how to find a fish, let alone catch one.

[Lurker]

Giving people fish and teaching them how to catch them is not a specifically enumerated power of the Federal Government.

L

[eyeamok]

All of this can be fixed overnight by simply refinancing the problem:

All Public Assistance programs for the needy shall be the financial responsibility of Public Servants, Public Employee’s and Officers of the Court through a Direct Assessment on their Income, Tips, and Wages.

[KyCats]

Maybe not. But we’re now giving away an awful lot of fish and that’s not going to change. Not a bad idea to invest some thought and money into teaching them to fish instead.

[omega4412]

For all intents and purposes, people are being paid not to be productive.

Or is it worse? People are being paid to get high, and the drugs are available at low cost through Medicaid. Opiates are the opiate of the people?

[Gay State Conservative]

I worked in health care for years...specifically in a major, “big city” hospital.Among the many things I learned there are 1) there are more than a few people in this country...of all ages...who have serious,chronic,truly disabling conditions and 2) that there are more than a few people in this country who collect disability payments while not suffering a truly disabling disorder.

[I want the USA back]

Government just wants control and doesn’t care if people suffer.

[BradyLS]

“Teach smeach. Long as ya keep votin’ for the rats, they’ll keep handin’ ya fish! And that’s all ya need t’know about fishin’!”

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

All federal welfare programs should be abolished. We have state governments. Let them take care of their residents.

[sargon]

All federal welfare programs should be abolished. We have state governments. Let them take care of their residents.

So true. And state governments are now fully mature, so to speak. There's certainly no Constitutional justification for them to submit to "one size fits all" federal programs whose enormous powers should properly and legally lie with each respective state.

Many states are essentially bribed with federal money in order to induce them to maintain conditions which amount to an unconstitutional cession of their perfectly legitimate State's Rights under the Constitution.

Furthermore, simply because a given state fails to assert or exercise its full rights and powers doesn't suddenly mean that the federal government is automatically permitted to assume—in other words, unconstitutionally usurp—such state powers...

[gattaca]

bmk