Essay On Social Welfare Reform

656 Words3 Pages

Social welfare, meaning AFDC, food stamps, subsidized housing, etc., should be reformed to a maximum of two years receiving benefits with various strings attached. If one is not working a job of some sort, they should not be able to receive any form of social welfare. According to David Cooper, a poverty and welfare analyst at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, many Americans are in fact working low hourly waged full-time jobs and receive food stamps to compensate for the lack of funds needed to provide for the employees and their families. This is in fact a problem that many claim raising minimum wage would solve, but so would working up to a higher level job. Minimum wage payments was not intended to raise large families or to be …show more content…

The idea of eliminating welfare as a whole would be an extreme economic shock but overtime would have benefits. This would mean that food stamps, ADFC, housing, and more would be completely done away with. Yes, this would leave many individuals and families struggling to find a source of food or a home, but would encourage people to get out and find jobs. Welfare has become a place of comfort and being provided for has sent the message to people that it is okay not to be working because the government will provide for you. The people who actually need the support are being punished because some are taking advantage of the program and bumming off of it for over a decade (Trump, 2011). The fact that over 30,000 employees have applied for welfare in America serves as proof that too many individuals are remaining at entry-level jobs for the entirety of their working career expecting to be able to provide higher level needs than what minimum wage can provide. Under President Obama, despite the countless bills to improve poverty rates, the shocking numbers state that poverty has reached a new high since Lyndon Johnson first announced the “War on Poverty” fifty years ago (Newman 2014). This is proof that the reformations overtime have ultimately not impacted the program in the way that previous presidents had hoped, and it is now time to eliminate the