In August of 2009, the unemployment rate in the United States was the highest it had been since the Great depression approximately 80 years before that. During that month, 9.6% of Americans were unemployed. That may not seem like very many people but 9.6% of the population is 29,452,800 people. During that month, over 29 million people were unemployed. Now in November of 2015, that percentage has gone down to 5.1%; which means over 16 million people are still unemployed because of the recent rise in the United States population. In the past 15 years, unemployment has become a major issue in the United States and we are in dire need of a great solution. Thank God we have welfare! Welfare helps so many people who aren’t educated enough to get a job to feed their growing families. Welfare programs have been set in place by the government to ensure a certain standard of living for the entire country.
How would you
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feel if you were responsible for three children in a bad economy, could not pay for a house, food, or even clothing to put on their backs? You would feel awful. But why are so many people unemployed in the first place? Why didn’t they go to college? Not everyone can pay for college. But what about scholarships? Well, you have to work hard to get scholarships. Well, what is wrong with working hard? Nothing, just not everyone can do it. Oh okay! Good thing we have welfare for the people who are incapable of working hard! Welfare is a program that gives out money to the people who can not earn it for themselves. This ensures that people will be able to provide for their family without a job. It is basically impossible to abuse welfare.
Welfare is purely used just to help people get back on their feet until they can find a stable job that will help them provide for themselves and their family. People never use it to just feed off of government money so they do not have to work or try to find a jobs. This is never a cop out for not getting a college education. Because of welfare, America has no need to look for other ways to help the unemployed. It is completely unreasonable to think of programs that include job training for people who did not go to college or maybe never graduated from college but still have families that they need to provide for. That could maybe be a great solution; or it could go terribly wrong because nothing could ever replace how perfectly welfare works. Welfare is also pretty much ethically perfect, right? We give money to the people who can not get it for themselves. But, what if we taught them how to make money for themselves so they could be self-sufficient? No that’s a terrible idea, job training would never
work. In fact, there are some people who are benefitting from welfare programs who are abusing its generosity by lying about their current financial state. They do this because Americans are lazy. In the transcript of Steven Colbert’s testimony about migrant workers, he says, “The brief experience gave me some small understanding of why so few Americans are clamoring to begin an exciting career as seasonal migrant field workers…Because apparently, even the invisible hand doesn’t want to pick beans.” When Colbert is saying this, he is talking about how Americans do not want a back-breaking job like working in the fields. This is a job mostly for people with very little education because it requires very little mental skill. Americans who did not get either a college or even a high school education could have this job and be able to make some sort of money to try to support their families; but Americans are lazy. Instead, Americans would rather depend on tax payers and the government to pay for them to live with no job, no education, and no way to support themselves or their families. It would be much more beneficial to the people who are depending on welfare to help them get an education in order to help them get a job that is not as labor intensive. This way, American’s laziness will not get in the way of them making money. This could also be helped through job training for adults who feel like they are incapable of going back and getting more education.
Imagine a world where you are working overtime, seven days a week, yet your kids are starving. You can’t get the education you need because you don’t have the time and money to afford it, and you can’t change jobs because this is the only one you can get. Unfortunately, this is the reality for millions of Americans living today. The federal minimum wage is too low to help families, and actually mathematically speaking, too low to survive on. The quality of life for minimum wage families is terribly low, and that is unacceptable. As humans, we should be looking after others and helping the poverty come out of their continuous cycle. Raising the minimum wage would not only help families be able to afford a better quality of life, but help them to afford healthy food, get an adequate education, and invest in the necessary health care they need.
In today’s America, there are many people who would either be disgusted at the very mention of Welfare or be highly grateful for its existence. I believe that in order for welfare to be more effective in America, there must be reform. From the time of its inceptions in 1935, welfare has lent a helping hand to many in crisis (Constitution Rights Foundation). However, at present many programs within the system are being abused and the people who are in real need are being cheated out of assistance. The year after the creation of welfare unemployment was just about twenty percent (Unemployment Statistics). The need for basic resources to survive was unparallel. Today, many people face the same needs as many did during the 30s. Some issues with
Currently, in the United States, the federal minimum wage has been $7.25 for the past six years; however, in 1938 when it first became a law, it was only $0.25. In the United States the federal minimum wage has been raised 22 times since 1938 by a significant amount due to changes in the economy. Minimum wage was created to help America in poverty and consumer power purchasing, but studies have shown that minimum wage increases do not reduce poverty. By increasing the minimum wage, it “will lift some families out of poverty, while other low-skilled workers may lose their jobs, which reduces their income and drops their families into poverty” (Wilson 4). When increasing minimum wage low-skilled, workers living in poor families,
The number of people on welfare has been dropping since the early 1990's. Just because you get a job does not guarantee you will go off welfare. Many jobs are low paying and low skilled. These are sometimes the only jobs welfare recipients are qualified for. Programs to train workers are a move in the right direction.
Welfare can be defined as health, happiness, and good fortune; well-being; Prosperity; and Financial or other aid provided, especially by the government, to people in need (Merriam-Webster, 2014). It can be very beneficial to people in need of it. Tim Prenzler stated that, “Welfare systems are often seen as providing a ‘safety net’ that prevents citizens falling below a minimum standard of living (2012, p2). Everyone is able to use is if they are in need of it. People have successfully used welfare to get out of their slum, and started to support themselves. Others have decided to not try to get out of that slum, and live off that welfare. They decided that they didn’t have to try, and let the government support them. Welfare is a good tool for people to get back on their feet, but shouldn’t be that persons steady income.
In recent years the minimum wage has been a heated topic. People want to hike it up to 15 dollars an hour which they call a living wage, while others just want to keep it the same. There are also others that suggest to bring the minimum wage to around $10.78 an hour, which should be around the minimum wage now if we account for inflation from the 1960’s. I agree with that to a certain point. We as a nation need to bring up the minimum wage only up to ten dollars so that less people are living in poverty, and not any higher so that states with smaller economies don 't crash and burn.
I have learned that welfare should imply more restrictions. If the American tax payers and the government have to invest huge amounts of money to the program, there money should be well spent. With today’s poor economy people can’t spend money like there is an endless supply. Welfare is a great program but it does have its imperfections.
Homelessness in America has grown for the past decades and the public/private responses have grown with it. There have been programs to help the them and programs to make them unwelcome in places. The homeless are gradually decreasing, and with awareness of the types of people that are homeless and the programs, laws, policies enacted, they will have the help they need to transition to a home and off the streets and the numbers will continue to decrease.
Welfare programs are an important part of American society. Without any type of American welfare, people will starve, children will not receive the proper education, and people will not receive any medical help simply because they do not have the resources available to them. Each of the three aspects of the American welfare system are unique in their own ways because they are funded differently and the benefits are given to different people. While support for these welfare systems has declined in the more recent years, the support for it when it was created was strong.
When you hear the words “welfare” what comes to mind? To me, the word welfare has always had a very negative connotation. However, after looking further into the concept behind it all, welfare isn’t always such a bad thing. In general, welfare provides financial stability for those who are otherwise unable to do so. Welfare can be very beneficial to a multitude of people with many different ways to make life easier. Welfare in the United States refers to a federal welfare program that has been put into place to benefit unemployed people or just your average lower class person. The most common forms of welfare are Medicaid and food stamps. Believe it or not, a welfare program is not a new idea. Welfare has started long before we were born. In the early days of welfare, the British put into place something called “poor laws”. These laws distinguished who was able to work and provide for themselves and who wasn’t due to physical condition or even how old they were. This was very similar to what President Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the times known as the great depression. The Social Security Act was amended in 1939, which gave lower income people more money throughout the depression. Unemployment Compensation and Aid to Dependent Children are two welfare programs that are still out there today. Welfare programs can benefit you in areas such as health, housing, tax relief and just more money in your pocket. Welfare is not only an American idea. In the Islāmic culture the word zakat means charity. Zakat is actually one of the five pillars of faith. This money has been collected by the government since the 7th century. The taxes, however, still have the same benefit to us. The taxes were collected and used to provide income to ...
It is very difficult to live in America if you are living off of minimum wage, and many Americans are living off of it today. Raising minimum wages has its benefits like gaining more money to live better, but people do not see the down side of the increases in wages. With the increase in minimum wage, it also causes the cost of living to increase. How can this help the economy or help people? Minimum wages in America should not be increased because it will cause cost of living to increase, reduce employment, and cause businesses to lose money and workers.
The welfare system is a carnage to the U.S.. Welfare is a waste of money, ObamaCare is destroying small businesses, and ObamaCare penalizes hard workers. Many people are oblivious of the things done by welfare systems.
With the combination of better work ethic, enforced spending restrictions, and constant supervision, people on welfare could have a true second chance in life, without our current form of government assistance coddling them from achieving their potential. Some people just need a push in the right direction before they can soar through the air. If we start to pride people with work ethic, more will duplicate this action striving for praise as well. If we educate the future generation on the actual reasons for welfare, they might listen and create a difference. We need to make a difference, to save ourselves, to save our country, and to save the world from becoming a completely dependent society. Save our country, improve welfare.
The living wage is more and more being called a movement because the current federal minimum wage laws does not provide enough money for an individual that works a full time job to be able to support a family. Making them feel like they should not have to raise a family in poverty. Across the United States there are efforts to provide what is called living wages for workers which began with requiring all employers to pay at least the minimum wage to its workers that is equal to the living wage for the area (City/State) they are working in. The current minimum wage is set, depending on where you are living it can be up to several dollars short of what should be the living wage. The living wage movement is very active in full force forward
Poverty is in our own backyard. Poverty isn’t turning around a globe and looking toward third world countries for an example. Poverty is everywhere. Poverty is the children down the street who go to bed hungry each night filled only with emptiness. Poverty is my neighbor who had her heat shut off this past winter. However I believe that poverty is preventable.