One of the biggest misconceptions about work and welfare is that somehow requiring folks to work is punishment. This myth plays especially hard for people of color in the inner cities. Encouraging people to work IS the compassionate position while encouraging people to not work is extremely detrimental to the individual, the family structure, and the entire community. Work provides much more than a paycheck at the end of the day. Employment brings about a sense of self-worth, a chance to develop the skills necessary to get to the next level and eventually leads to the ability to start building generational wealth. We have allowed the conversation to deteriorate to the point where we are talking about requiring “able bodied childless adults” to work for benefits when the truth be told, people with kids need to work as well (I certainly missed the “no work if you have kids” boat!). But what is able bodied? Veterans with prosthetic arms and legs overcome all kinds of challenges to be productive members of society and their lives are without question enriched by their ability to remain self-dependent. We’ve allowed the narrative to be presented at an emotional level without an ounce of logic. Yes, people shouldn’t be poor, but people who have a work ethic and some basic skills aren’t poor. It’s time to revisit Atlas Shrugged, two plus two is four, period! We cannot continue to punt on these most important issues. Requiring work should be a given. The first step out of poverty is a job. Period! Dick Ackerman, R- California said the temporary safety net has become a permanent safety hammock. It sure has, hasn’t it? Governor Evers on his first day of office reversed some of Scott Walker’s work requirements, making it easier to put off getting a job for an additional year. Why? It’s time to end the safety hammock and get Wisconsin back to work. It’s good for people to work!
Welfare or the disincentive to work
Recently I floated the idea on Facebook that if we didn’t have enough people to fill all the jobs available, why do we need food stamps and so many other government assistance programs. The question arose from the left constantly saying we need an open border, which is a ridiculous solution to a labor shortage if there actually is one. From the reaction of a few self-acclaimed ‘conservatives” the issue has been completely co-opted by emotion and a willful lack of understanding. The fact of the matter is according to the most recent numbers, more than one in four adults and over half our children live in a household that receives benefits. Most of the adult recipients are required to work 30 hours, but 3 out of ten recipients don’t work at all. 90% stay on welfare for over two years and 76% stay on welfare for over five years.
NOTE: Supposedly (according to many) we need to allow a dangerously porous border because we just don’t have enough workers.
Some of the pushback I got about ending the welfare system was mired in the “minimum wage” doesn’t pay the bills (of course I never suggested ending the safety net, just reforming it a bit). My points here are fairly sound. First, no one pays minimum wage, no one. McDonalds pays well over $10 per hour to start. More if you can work during school hours. Second, how bad is your work ethic that one doesn’t get a few “merit raises” in a fairly short amount of time? Third, there are really good paying jobs to be had, but ask any human resource manager who gets those good jobs? Someone who hasn’t worked in four years because flipping burgers wasn’t good enough for them, or the person who has been flipping burgers for a few years and has an extended track record of showing up for work.
Black American Males Hit Hardest
Black men are excluded from the welfare state. As a matter fact the welfare state is their competition when it comes to providing for a family. Many can’t compete with the steady income that the government provides. Mainly because the low level of investment in the inner cities means higher paying jobs are few. The combination of low paying jobs and competition from welfare payments in many cases prevents men from fulfilling their rightful place as providers for their families and leaves children without a strong male role model and leaves women without a strong spiritual partner.
Note: Every statistic one looks at suggests that all families, regardless of race, creed or color, are significantly less likely to live in poverty if the family consists of a married couple.
The reader is encouraged to read the 100-Billion-dollar Man. Authors Steven Nock, Professor of Sociology, and Director of the Marriage Matters project at the University of Virginia, and Chris Einolf Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Virginia in 2006 outline the costs of fatherless families. WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THIS ENOUGH!
https://www.fatherhood.org/one-hundred-billion-dollar-man
The costs cannot be measured in dollars and cents
The decline of our family structures costs more than just the monetary outlays of these welfare programs. Paying people to not work while businesses struggle to hire enough workers is beyond maddening. Much of the ill-will that is being experienced today is a symptom of the welfare state.
Justice Antonin Scalia – “The transformation of charity into legal entitlement has produced donors without love and recipients without gratitude.” The economic division of the two Americas is real.
Thomas Sowell – “Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensation for injustices – leading to worsening behavior by the recipients.”
The Power of the Two-Parent Home (click to read).
Children who live in a two-parent home do better. Period. They are healthier. They are less likely to need counseling services, special education, they are less likely to commit crimes, overdose, and engage in prostitution.
Yes, yes ,yes, there’s those whose kids are sickly, and they can’t get to work, and things are tough. But I’ve watched business after business reduce their hours or close their doors altogether because workers are impossible to find. The fact of the matter is the welfare life is comfortable enough to “forgo” those pesky entry level jobs. Let’s take a look.
Lots of free stuff if you don’t work, and some if you do.
A few years back the Wisconsin legislature took a look at the “financial cliff” of welfare. Many complained that welfare handouts went from everything to nothing as soon as their earnings hit a certain threshold. Most programs now have a “sliding scale” that gradually deceases benefits as income goes up.
Let’s look at the programs in Wisconsin.
Click here to read about the Wisconsin’s Food Share Program
Wisconsin spent just shy of $1.5 BILLION in 2023. $1,497,926,18 to be exact (in Foodshare alone!). During that time anyone who went to a restaurant or retail store experienced worker shortages and reduced hours that we discussed above.
Click here to read about the Medical Assistance Program .
The Medical Assistance Program spends roughly $14 billion a year with about half coming from the federal government. Of course, the federal portion is funded by printed money with substantial inflationary repercussions.
Recently, in light of a skyrocketing national debt and corresponding debt reduction conservations, it has been reported that congress is “feeling the heat” because in many districts, over one out of three children are receiving Medicaid benefits. Of course, the trick here wouldn’t be to take away children’s healthcare by ending or reducing Medicaid payments. The goal should be to eliminate the NEED for it. Quality healthcare is a commodity and an expensive commodity at that. It is interesting to see that the democrats are not interested in finding waste and abuse in the very programs they claim they want to save.
Click here to read about the Economic Support Programs (Child Care and Wisconsin Works (W-2)).
The Childcare subsidies and the “welfare to work” programs are yet another level of subsidies that are available to “families” and they cost another $700+ million per year, a large percentage paid by the federal government. The federal government, again printing inflationary dollars, hands out the money for these programs and then the state budgets are strapped as people learn to rely on the government handouts.
We have let the big government liberal control the narrative. Even the most conservative members of the legislature feel the need to add the caveat that only able-bodied “childless” adults need to work in order to receive benefits. As mentioned in prior posts, I must have missed the “no need to work because I have kids” memo. And what is able-bodied? Men and women come home for serving their country missing limbs and they find ways to live a productive life.
Every Biennium the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) publishes a litany of “Informational Papers” go to https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lfb/informational_papers– an amazing source of information.
Bill Savage – Editor -The Wisconsin Conservative Digest. The links have been left in this article. The electronic version available online will have active links.
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