The Pros and Cons of Welfare

1102 Words3 Pages

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 ...

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...benefits of it.

Works Cited

Arrow, Kenneth. "Economic welfare and the allocation of resources for invention." The rate and direction of inventive activity: Economic and social factors. Nber, 1962. 609-626.

Harsanyi, John C. "Cardinal welfare, individualistic ethics, and interpersonal comparisons of utility." Essays on Ethics, Social Behavior, and Scientific Explanation. Springer Netherlands, 1976. 6-23.

Pigou, Arthur Cecil. The economics of welfare. Transaction Publishers, 1924.

Pierson, Paul, ed. The new politics of the welfare state. Oxford University Press, 2001.

Sen, Amartya K. "Collective choice and social welfare." (1970).

Arneson, Richard J. "Equality and equal opportunity for welfare." Philosophical studies 56.1 (1989): 77-93.

Moffitt, Robert. "Incentive effects of the US welfare system: A review." Journal of Economic Literature 30.1 (1992): 1-61.

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