If we give away welfare to poor people with no work requirements attached, does this make them lazy and indolent? It's hardly a nonsensical idea, though there's not much evidence that it happens in real life.
More importantly, however, is that nearly all of our big means-tested welfare programs do have work requirements. The main exception is Medicaid because, generally speaking, we don't want people dying in the streets even if they don't have a job. Here are the rest of the Big Seven welfare programs:
- CHIP: Explicitly limited to families with incomes above the poverty line.
- SSI: Explicitly for the sick and disabled who are unable to work.
- EITC: Explicitly limited to the working poor.
- SNAP: Requires work unless you're caring for a child under six.
- TANF: Designed from the start to require work.
- Housing assistance: Generally no work requirement.
You might want to add the Child Tax Credit to this list, but it's not a means-tested program. Everyone is eligible for it up to an income of half a million dollars. In any case, it's a tax credit and therefore requires some income, though not very much.
Jesus said:
May a million be homeless to prevent an able-bodied person from getting free money!
🎯 and if the laws against the abuse of millionaire tax cuts, were half as tough as the ones for welfare, the deficit would be gone!
I find that people who criticize welfare the most have never been on welfare and don't know anyone who has. Of course there are people who will use their own experience to generalize everyone. My reality is I've been fortunate enough to have never been in need. I'm also humble enough to realize that one day I might.
In the 60s, my grandmother was on welfare and lived in public housing for a number of years. It let her leave my grandfather, who was an abusive alcoholic, taking with her three kids (including one with Downs). Eventually she got a job as a secretary for the city and got promoted so that she retired as a department head, and owned a house with a pool, which was the peak of luxury for her (HUGE Esther Williams fan). And her kids and her grandkids and her greatgrandkids have all escaped poverty. All because grandma got no strings attached welfare 60 years ago.
People don't realize that generational welfare, though it does exist, is hardly the norm.
I disagree. My rural Trumper family and friends complain loudly and repeatedly about the handful of dirtbag losers they know or observe personally.
"Of course there are people who will use their own experience to generalize everyone." Your statement seems to provide en example of this. What exactly are you disagreeing with?
The Trumpers I know very much know the people milking the system.
You will never convince them that their neighbor who is out hunting and ORVing all the time deserves disability and can’t work. You will never convince them that the secretary who takes half her pay under the table so that her family qualifies for Medicaid isn’t gaming the system. And you certainly won’t win hearts and minds yapping about the drug addled good for nothings that have kids they obviously can’t afford.
I’d assume most of the people they are talking about are on Social Security Disability and Medicaid, not Welfare.
It doesn't really matter. They've been conditioned to believe any government assistance is for lazy people. Nevermind the fact that half of them might be on one form of government assistance or another themselves. It's always the other guy that's undeserving or the lazy one.
You are correct. About half of them are beneficiaries of some anti poverty program or another, and willfully blind to this fact.
My favorite was a family member who was shocked to learn I was paying $400/week/child for summer day camp, because it only costs him $15.
My sister is registered with a tribe. (I am not, we are both adopted and from different birth parents). She also worked as a social worker (CPS) in a county with a lot of native peoples.
The tribes, predictably, run casinos. Most have a policy that if any member comes to the back door of a casino, they will be fed. They report that this might lead to them being "rezzed out" as they call it. Kind of indolent and unmotivated.
After more than 50 years of working for a living, I don't have to any more. However, I find that I do better when I have something valuable to do - and not just valuable to myself, but to someone else. Another person, the community, etc.
We might have to coax people in this direction, but I think that's something that can be accomplished.
While true that many of these programs have a work requirement, I wonder if there is more to the story.
For example, on the link below, notice the large increasing in disability in 2009 and 2010. Was that driven by something that suddenly injuring many workers? Or, was that rise a direct function of the recession?
Note, eligibility for disability (Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) holds, as I recall, 'no ability to work.' Thus, can't drive Uber, work on a computer from home, etc. Perhaps a lot of people got injured in 2009 who also happened to heal by 2017, or the work requirements for government programs, are very subjective and not as real as they appear.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibGraphs.html
Disability is kind of a defacto UBI for unemployable people in a lot of places I think
SSDI andSSI are very difficult to get. 2/3 of applicants are turned down the first time. A large number of people get a lawyer after they get tuned down. SSI minimum payout is below the federal poverty level. They can't have more than $2000 in savings. If they marry, their award can be reduced based on the spouse's income. A close family member has serious mental illness. They really can't work. While physically they could work, their delusional thinking makes work impossible. It irritates me when people act like SSI or SSDI is a racket. when numbers go up or down, it may have to do with economy or social security backlog or management.
Getting on Medicaid is just as difficult. You pretty much have to be destitute. I agree it's really irritating because people don't realize how difficult it is and how bad your circumstances have to be to get some forms of government assistance.
I just googled it: People on SSDI can earn up to $1550 a month without losing their disability stipend.
"The main exception is Medicaid because, generally speaking, we don't want people dying in the streets even if they don't have a job"
Are you sure about this? Would seem to me that the MAGA/GOP crowd would be perfectly happy with the poor (especially non white poor), dying in the streets after they cut Medicare. Its really a two-fer, they can fund a tax cut for the wealthy and it gets rid of the surplus population.
If you are disabled and receive SSI you can work. They adjust benefits accordingly on a monthly lsgging basis.