Min Myint

Professor Butler
Political science 1
June 28, 2015
Safety Net Programs
Safety net means the broad range of programs that protects the families and individuals
living at the minimum standards. The programs protect against, unemployment, income loss and
poverty, physical and mental illness and disability, family disintegration and old age. Safety Net
Programs can be divided into two basic groups that are Social Insurance and Means-Tested.
Social insurance can be characterized into Social Security and Medicare. In social insurance,
individuals are contributed to an insurance trust fund by the payroll tax on their salaries and
receive benefits afterwards. Another one is called Means-tested. In means-tested, benefits are
given out to who those who can show that their income is low enough to qualify. General income
tax revenues funded this type of program. Food stamp programs are good example of federal
grant-in-aids to the local government to provide and support the very poor. Total federal
spending for this safety net programs was $2.5 million in 2012. The budget was mostly spent on
social insurance. Means-tested programs are much smaller compared to the social insurance
programs. The article called U.S. poverty rate decreased over past half-century thanks to safetynet programs written by Zachary A. Goldfarb stated that safety net programs helped reduce the
poverty percentage of the Americans from 26 percent in 1967 to 16 percent in 2012. Christopher
Wimer of Columbia Population Research Center said that poverty percent of people in America
would have risen by five or six percent from 2007 to 2012 if there werent any types of safety net
programs.

Economic and Social issues.

American policymakers and the public have started to notice the other international issues
and globalization plays an important role in this regard. United States is well known for its single
market and production system. Since the end of the Second World War, America has become
worlds leading advocate for independent and more open trading system. Most of the important
trading nation had adopted the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) under the
leadership of Americans in 1948. The GATT is an agreement that is designated to lower, and then
eliminate, tariffs on most traded goods and to end nontariff trade restrictions as well. During the
Uruguay Round in 1994, GATT was changed to World Trade Organization (WTO). The leaders
of the United States are mainly involved in maintaining the worlds economy. Americans leaders
are also concerned when it comes to rescuing countries that are on the margin of economic
collapse. The reason why they do so is that their own economy is interrelated to the global
economy. During the Great Recession and political gridlock, United States was forced to share
global financial and economic leadership with other countries like China and Germany. Some
rich countries gave assistance to the poor countries for humanitarian and security reasons. Some
countries got improved from the assistance but some did not improve. With the help from rich
countries, Africa had conquered river blindness. Unfortunately, countries like Bangladesh and
sub-Saharan Africa are still struggling with the dreadful poverty. Even though United States is
involved in World Bank development loans for poor countries, their budget on foreign aid is very
low which was about 0.6 percent of the federal budget. In the article Income Inequality Is
Costing the U.S. on Social Issues, income inequality has become a problem in the United
States economy. The author, Eduardo Porter stated that debate about the income inequality has
been address along with the Affordable Care Act and the minimum wage.

Works Citied

Goldfarb, Zachar. "Study: U.S. Poverty Rate Decreased over past Half-century Thanks to Safetynet Programs." Washington Post. December 9, 2013. Accessed June 29, 2015.
Porter, Eduardo. "Income Inequality Is Costing the U.S. on Social Issues." The New York Times.
April 28, 2015. Accessed June 29, 2015.

the federal budget.