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Nicholas Carlson
Collin Hull
English 2010
10 February 2015

Is Government Welfare Meeting Its Intended Purpose?

This picture shows a common occurrence of a line of people waiting to receive welfare. The issue of
receiving welfare has varying viewpoints and is a heated debate.

The Many Faces of Welfare

Much has been discussed about welfare and help from the government.
According to data collected by the Census Bureau from the fourth quarter of 2012, the
government agency responsible for gathering statistics about the United States population
and economy, 153,323,000 Americans receive federal assistance from one or more
programs. This equals almost 50 percent of the population (Jeffrey, par. 4). However, the

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question remains if government welfare is meeting its intended purpose. Some say that
welfare is being taken advantage of by immigrants, drug users, and lazy people. Others
argue that welfare is necessary to survive in todays economy where what one makes is
hardly enough to survive yet alone provide for a family. Still, others think that these
government benefits can work if certain requirements and regulations are implemented to
obtain assistance. These different viewpoints paint a picture of an issue that is a hot topic
in todays economy. This essay will discuss the various perspectives of this issue and
give us a more clear understanding of all sides of a heated controversy.

Welfare and Its Intended Purpose

What is welfare? As described in an essay by Michael P. Auerbach, who holds a
Bachelors and Masters degree and has both private and public sector experience in
political science and economics, welfare can be defined as a public policy in which
programs are introduced to help a political systems poor or disabled population reenter
the workforce and care for themselves (par. 3). This gives a brief understanding of what
welfares purpose is. It was designed to help people get back on their feet and to be able
to provide for themselves and others. But, why do we need it? To find out why we need
to learn about the history of welfare.
In October of 1929, Wall Street crashed and stocks fell. This was the beginning
of the Great Depression. This resulted in many people losing their jobs and made it so
they could not provide for their families. Something needed to be done for all of these
people who were considered below the poverty line. Franklin Roosevelt campaigned and
eventually took the presidency. He introduced the New Deal, a policy that would be a
means of helping this collapse in the economy. It focused on providing relief, recovery

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and reform (Auerbach, par. 3-5). With this in place, the economy started to build back
up. Various acts and laws were passed to help assist this as well.
So what is the purpose of welfare? Welfare was designed to get us back up from
where we had fallen. It was a starting point that once one had stabilized, they would
return to work. The initial implementation was only a temporary fix. This leads to the
arguments and various perspectives of this issue. We will take a look at each of these
sides of the controversy.

The Government Shouldnt Help

There are those who believe the welfare system is being taken advantage of and
that people are asking for help dont who really need it or deserved it. Some of us have
probably heard of the welfare queen. When President Ronald Reagan was running for
president he gave a story of a women. She was said to have had multiple social security
cards, reap benefits from four dead husbands, and earn some $150,000 a year. In an
article by John Blake, a CNN journalist, he describes just how this queen is still here.
He says
The Welfare Queen reveals an uncomfortable truth: More
Americans have turned the social safety net into a
hammock.
You hear these horror stories going around that people are buying
junk food with food stamps and paying cash for vodka and beer
and things not covered with food stamps that gets people mad.
(Blake, par. 9-10)

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We see here an example of the viewpoints of this side and how they think people on
welfare are just using the system. Some take it a step further and say that it is causing
people to become dependent, lose work ethic, and feel entitlement. In an article done by
the Cato Institute, a public policy research organization, we learn about why many may
become dependent on welfare. It shows a table of what wages would be equal to welfare
in each state. Many of the states provide benefits that are above todays minimum wage.
The conclusion of this article states that as long as the benefits are higher than a job that
people will choose welfare over work (Tanner, Moore, Hartman). We can see why people
would want this help. Since welfare provides more than most entry-level jobs, people
think it is better to receive government help.
WageEquivalentofWelfare,1995
Rank

Jurisdiction

PretaxWageEquivalent($)

HourlyWage($)

Hawaii

36,400

17.50

Alaska

32,200

15.48

Massachusetts

30,500

14.66

Connecticut

29,600

14.23

DistrictofColumbia

29,100

13.99

NewYork

27,300

13.13

NewJersey

26,500

12.74

RhodeIsland

26,100

12.55

California

24,100

11.59

10

Virginia

23,100

11.11

This image is part of the table discussed by Tanner, Moore, and Hartman. It shows the amount of welfare
one can receive in a state and the amount they would need to earn per hour to receive the same amount.

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Its Just Not Enough

Many of us can agree that money doesnt come easy. We have struggles and
sometimes find it hard to get by with what we make. Those who agree with this think
that what they make is just not enough. In todays economy the minimum wage is $7.25,
or $15,080 a year with forty hours worked per week or $41.31 a day (including taxes).
For them this is just not enough to get by. With the cost of living going up day after day
and wages staying constant, it is no wonder why people believe that they cannot provide
for themselves and a family. However, with help from the government people are able to
get through. Welfare provides some people with the extra boost needed to make it.
In his book The Minimum Wage And Labor Market Outcomes, Christopher Flinn,
a professor of economics at New York University, discusses the effects that minimum
wage has had on the economy as well as some of its trends.
The path of the real minimum wage is striking. From its inception
until the late 1960s the trend in the real minimum wage was clearly
positive, and since then the real minimum wage has almost
continually decline. The few nominal minimum wage changes that
occurred during this period merely partially halted the decline for a
brief period. This decline explains why fewer and fewer
employees are paid at or below minimum wage over this three
decade period. (Flinn 13)
Minimum wage is not moving forward as fast as the economy is. With this knowledge
people see a need to receive additional help. They realize that this is just not enough and
depend on the government for assistance.

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Government Involvement of Welfare

When it comes to the topic of welfare some people hold more of a neutral stance,
but see a need for welfare to be more fully regulated and watched over to reach its
purpose. One of the main discussions of this issue comes with the proposal of raising
minimum wage. In an article titled A Federal Minimum Wage And The States, authors
Logan Albright and Ike Brannon, a senior analyst at Capital Policy Analytics consulting
firm and president of Capital Policy Analytics respectively, talk about this very issue.
The proposed new minimum wage is $10.10. This is believed to help those with lowincome jobs. According to their research, 16 percent of those currently employed in the
United States, around 23 million Americans, make $10.10 or less (Albright, Brannon).
Tables are shown by states to give a full effect of the proposal.
Along with the minimum wage proposal, another discussion in the welfare issue
is the regulating those who can receive government assistance by issuing drug tests. This
stems from a common belief that those on welfare use drugs. The mentality is that if you
are able to buy drugs that you shouldnt be asking the government for money or
assistance. This may or may not be true, but the reasoning behind this regulation is to
prevent further abuse of the system as well as get the government to become more
involved with the welfare program.
At the end of the day people want equality between the middle to low class and
the upper class. No one wants to feel that they have to work harder than someone else to
receive the same benefit. People want the government to treat them just as equal as
others.

The Destined Fate of Welfare

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As we can see, welfare is a highly discussed issue in the economy today. With the
many viewpoints that people hold it is hard to tell if welfare is meeting its initial design.
From what we have learned, the original goal was to get people back in the workforce. In
recent times there are different views. Many still believe that what jobs pay is inadequate
to survive in todays harsh environment. Others see that the system is faulty and needs
further regulation. Only time will tell whether the welfare program is working and if its
intended purpose has been fulfilled.

Works Cited

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ALBRIGHT, LOGAN, and IKE BRANNON. A Federal Wage And The States.
Regulation 37.2 (2014): 30-33. Business Source Premier. Web. 10. Feb. 2015
Auerbach, Michael P. Welfare. Research Starters Sociology (Online Edition) (2009):
Research Starters. Web. 10. Feb. 2015
Blake, John. "Return of the "Welfare Queen"" 23 Jan. 2012. CNN. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.
Flinn, Christopher J. The Minimum Wage And Labor Market Outcomes. Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press, 2010. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 10 Feb. 2015.
Jeffrey, Terence. "The 35.4 Percent: 109,631,000 on Welfare." 20 Aug. 2014. CNS
News. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.
Tanner, Michael, Stephen Moore, and David Hartman. "The Work Versus Welfare
Trade-Off: An Analysis of the Total Level of Welfare Benefits by State." 19 Sept.
1995. Cato Institute. Web. 10 Feb. 2015.

Images
N.J. Welfare Lines Grow Longer as Jobs Continue to Dry up. 2009. By Jerry McCrea.
The Work Versus Welfare Trade-Off: An Analysis of the Total Level of Welfare Benefits
by State. 1995. By Michael Tanner, Stephen Moore, and David Hartman.