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Capitalism in the USA easy
United States welfare system and its effects
United States welfare system and its effects
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Recommended: Capitalism in the USA easy
Some people consider the United States a just society, but there are citizens that have a completely different meaning of the word just. America is a capitalist society where everyone has to work for a successful life. This is the base of what a equitable community should look like. A just society is a place where people have to work for their wealth and success, but the government helps the citizens that are not capable of this. If one person works harder than another, she should be rewarded with a higher pay. If someone works hard but only receives minimum wage, he deserves to be able to thrive in life. In this case the government should help the person thrive by giving them welfare. People who are wealthy should have to pay taxes to help …show more content…
For example, someone who works at a shipyard labors very hard but is not paid a lot. If one tries his hardest to support his family, but he only gets paid minimum wage, he should be able to receive welfare. This is very different than someone who spends her whole day on the couch not trying to get a job or make money. The person who works hard, is paid minimum wage, and has a family, should not have to worry about if his children will be able to eat that night. Children have no say in what environment they grow up in, and is not fair to make that child suffer because their father is not being paid enough for his hard work. These progenies are the next generation, and they could grow up to be amazing people that help better the world. Giving them a good education gives them resources to become doctors that could cure cancer or a lawyer that puts murderers in …show more content…
In this same society there are citizens who are not as lucky, make minimum wage, and struggle to support themselves and their family. In an ideal community, the wealthy members will give some of their money to the government to use as welfare. This will allow hard working people who are not able to provide for their family to thrive and to support themselves and their loved ones. If someone has more money than they need, they should have to give it to people who have barely enough money. That one wealthy person might not work as hard as the citizen in poverty, but he inherited large sums of patrimony. He needs to acknowledge that not everyone is as privileged as he is, and he needs to give to those
Why should we be the ones to pay for someone to sit around at home? The answer is one simple word, welfare. There are many reasons why people mooch on welfare, rather than going out and working. The only jobs these people are qualified for are minimum wage jobs. As Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, worked at minimum wage paying jobs and reported the hardships that people had to go through on a day-to-day basis. A critic responded by saying, “This is simply the case of an academic who is forced to get a real job…” Ehrenriech’s reasoning for joining the working-class is to report why people who mite be on welfare, continue to stay on welfare. Her reports show there are many hardships that go along with minimum waged jobs, in the areas of drug abuse, fatigue, the idea of invisibility, education and the American Dream.
It seems like the Welfare system treats its recipients with disrespect and shame to discourage them from joining the system. The people who made and run Welfare in the 1990s made Welfare into a blame game and forces recipients to solely blame themselves for their poverty. The moral prescriptions in individually getting rid of poverty according to TANF are the Work Plan/Family Plan. The focuses on work and family are contradictory because of how little time there is to get both goals done and each goal perpetuates the idea that it is the most important part of ending poverty. It seems like Welfare is more about getting people off of Welfare than eradicating poverty. There is a difference in the goals and that is reflected in how the recipients are treated and how Welfare is run.
For the past year I have watched my younger sister struggle to support herself and her now 11 month old baby. She makes more than minimum wage. She has struggled to the point where she was evicted and now lives with me. I have also experienced struggling on low pay. When I was 18 I was kicked out of my family’s house, and I was only making $8 an hour. There were days where I had to choose between paying rent and getting my electricity shut off, just because I couldn’t work enough hours to pay all of my bills. It can be very scary to only make minimum wage and have to support yourself. There are changes that need to be made so that every person can live properly with any job.
Nowadays to live in Napa, CA where I live, one single person should make at least $12 an hour to receive a living wage. Then for one adult and a child the adult has to make $25.82 an hour at least for two adults and one adult working he/she should make at least about $24.13. The minimum wage in Napa is $9, and it is very hard for people to survive on a minimum payment. People often work two jobs to pay rent, bills, but the sad part is that the family loses a lot of time together because parents are working most of the time. For example, I know a man from my neighborhood who works two jobs during the day from 8a.m to 4 p.m. He works at a hotel as a dishwasher, and during the night, he works in a restaurant as a dishwasher. I rarely see him, and I see he is not with his family all day. He works almost every day to sustain his family, but doesn’t have time to hangout with his family. I just think that this is wrong because it is inhuman that a person works all day, seven days a week. My neighbor is so skinny, and I think he is like this because he works too much. We should have a minimum wage increase to benefit all people who work hard like him.
Working money provides more for families than borrowed money. Money cannot continue to be distributed unfairly from productive Americans to Americans who refuse to be constructive. Americans need to concentrate on the long-term effects of welfare. People are depending on the programs available to survive. What are we teaching our future generations, to rely on someone else? According to _ over one hundred and forty million dollars were spent on SNAP/Food Stamps in February 2016 alone; however, this was only in Tennessee. Welfare recipients are taking advantage of many aid and programs that should be profiting other families or children in crisis. Growing up there were five of us in our household. I have no problem with tax dollars being used to help families in a crisis. There were three children, my dad, and step mom; however, my dad was the only source of income for our family; therefore, my dad had to pay not only his expenses, but for four other family members too. Welfare recipients must think about this on only a small spectrum of how this would affect a family
The concept of the "working poor" has gained prominence in the post-welfare reform era. As welfare rolls shrunk, the focus shifted from the dependent poor to the working poor. It was obvious that without substantial outside support, even families with full-time low-wage workers were still earning less than the official poverty line. And while American society purports that anyone can prosper if they work hard enough, it became apparent that with inadequate opportunity or bad luck, a growing number of families could not attain the American dream, or even break the cycle of poverty. The new challenge for American social policy is to help the working poor lift themselves out of poverty. That's why progressives who supported ending welfare as we know it have set a new goal -- the government should "make work pay" so that no one who works full time is poor.
The ideal concept of American society is one in which all of the citizens are treated equal in all every realm and situation. Class, race or gender does not divide the utopian America; everyone is afforded the same opportunities and chances for success. In this chimerical state Americans are able to go as far as their dreams allow and with hard work and perseverance any thing is possible. Many Americans subscribe to this pluralist view of the Country, believing that within our democratic system it is the majority who maintains control and sets policy. Unfortunately this idyllic country does not exist nor has it ever existed. America is made up of distinct social classes and the movement within those classes is for the most part, limited to the various classes in the middle where the lines of demarcation are blurred. Although the majority of the Country's population would attest to the myth that America is a classless society, the distinctions definitely exist and influence the entire life scope of most Americans. Housing, health care, education, career prospects and social status are all dependent on the amount of wealth one has and their class standing. Our system needs the built in inequities of the class system in order to perpetuate itself and the upper class needs to have their interests as the dominant determiner of corporate and governmental power and policy.
It is a commonly known fact that a large percentage of Americans are living on and relying on welfare, which is a government program that provides financial aid to individuals or groups of people who cannot support themselves. Welfare began in the 1930’s during the Great Depression. There are several types of assistance offered by the government, which include healthcare, food stamps, child care assistance, unemployment, cash aid, and housing assistance. The type of welfare and amounts given depend on the individual, and how many children they have. There are many people who honestly need the government assistance, but there are also many who abuse the privilege.
...ave the education they need to thrive in society. Modern education is an essential part of society and without it society would fall to shambles.
The minimum wage today has a lot of issues; some people say it is not enough to live comfortably. Many agree that there needs to be an increase in minimum wages and by doing that it can help with our issues of poverty. Statistics show that a worker who is full time and earning minimum wage makes only $15,080 a year, which is under the federal poverty line for a family of two. (Gitis, 2013) The problem with that is $15,080 is not a sufficient amount that a person can live and grow on. “A family of two can consist of a mother and son or daughter, father and son or ...
I also think minimum wage effects what people can afford and therefore only allows them to look for low-income housing, which is limited. Like Reamer (1989) said, many families either divorce or don’t combine households which requires more units to live in. Many times women are in custody of the children, and she may work multiple minimum wage jobs trying to keep her kids in school or daycare while she affords rent and food. Her expenses would be higher because she is also paying for other mouths to feed—often on her own. That doesn’t leave much of her income to be allowed for rent. I also think that homelessness can happen to almost anyone. I have read stories of college educated adults whom are living on the streets. The majority of those who are homeless are in poverty, making the minimum wage in search of options that would allow them to afford the housing they need. I think that the cost of living is too high for a single parent or single person to be living on minimum wage. Everything costs too much, and it is unacceptable that people have to live on the streets because housing is a
Being raised in a single-parent lower class home, I realize first-hand the need for welfare and government assistance programs. I also realize that the system is very complex and can become a crutch to people who become dependent and complacent. As a liberal American I do believe that the government should provide services to the less fortunate and resources to find work. However, as able-bodied citizens we should not become complacent with collecting benefits and it is the government’s job to identify people who take advantage of the system and strip benefits from people who are not making efforts to support themselves independently. I will identify errors that exist within the welfare system and several policy recommendations to implement a change that will counteract the negative conditions that currently exist.
Welfare for the poor means minimal support, degrading, humiliation and continued poverty. On the other hand, welfare for the non-poor provides security and are based on legitimacy. The welfare system does not distribute benefits on the base of need but rather on the basis of legitimacy. Poor people are often view as less legitimate as compare to the non-poor. Furthermore, welfare programs for the poor are labeled and can be seen as disgraceful. As stated in the article there is much degradation and humiliations involved in some poor people’s programs that some try greatly to stay off welfare. Some who are qualified for the programs do not take it due to negative indignity and shame that comes along with it. In comparison to welfare programs for the non-poor much protective language is taken to cover up and camouflaged the wording of the programs. Another, important difference between welfare for the poor and welfare for the non-poor are level of government involved. Welfare programs for the non-poor are federally financed and administered with decisions on eligibility and on levels of support made nationally. Programs for the poor are usually supported by federal funds and administered as local programs. I asked my boyfriend what his thoughts were on social security and welfare he responded that they were two completely different programs .He stated
Everyone has his or her own ideas of how wealth should be distributed properly. Some people believe wealth should be left to family, left for public services, or become the property of others. Others believe that people should not have excess wealth, resulting in non-existent class distinctions. An alternative view is that wealth is not distributed; instead, the wealthy continue to grow wealthier while those in poverty can not escape it and fall further into a life of poverty. The beliefs discussed above come from three different writers. Those writers include Andrew Carnegie, Karl Marx, and Robert B. Reich. These writers all have different opinions on how wealth should be distributed properly.
Economic inequality is ingrained in our society. Because of this fact, many would argue that “that’s just how it is,” but in reality this is not how a community is suppose to function. As Michael Sandel writes in his book Justice, “As inequality deepens, rich and poor live increasingly separate lives.” Sandel makes an excellent point. As economic divisions, such as the ones present in the United States, worsen, the classes diverge on every level. Wealthy people attend different schools, purchase luxury cars, and live in gated communities. Meanwhile, the poor live in squalor, use public transportation, and attend failing schools. Aside from the lack of a quality education making it harder to escape poverty, the poor are from birth at a disadvantage to those on the other side of the economic scale. The United States is not a land of guaranteed equality of result, that is...