According to Dictionary.com, welfare is financial or other assistance to an individual or family from a city, state, or national government. Today, there are approximately 12.8 million Americans receiving welfare benefits (Gaille 1). Although welfare was designed to have a positive impact on society and the less fortunate, it is doing neither. The United States welfare system consists of over eighty programs that have a total annual spending of over one trillion dollars; more than seventy-five percent of this funding is coming from the federal government (Sheffield and Rector 1). As of the year 2017, the United States is nineteen trillion dollars in debt (Vitter 1). We can not simply afford for our government agencies to be putting our tax dollars toward such careless people.
To be straight forward, welfare creates a culture of dependency (Levin 1). Welfare allows for those who do not simply want, or attempt, to make a living for themselves, to be handed others’ hard earned money (Levin 3). Over forty-five percent of families receiving government funded assistance only received a highschool diploma (Foster and Hawk 5). Around forty percent of people who did not graduate high school receive these benefits (Hyer 3). When an individual does not proceed to go further in life
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The most common type of welfare fraud involves “off the books” employment. In the most common welfare programs, the benefits decrease as the incomes increase; off the books employment is rarely reported to the welfare office. When an individual “hides” their earnings, the recipient is able to “double dip”. The individuals now are getting full welfare benefits that they are ineligible to receive while at the same time receiving earnings from their “off the books” jobs (Levin 8). Not only is this unethical, but it is also making it harder for the few individuals who need welfare to make it through day to day life (Levin