I like the Head Start program. It is a program that provides early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families. This program is designed to foster stable family relationships, enhance children’s physical and emotional well-being, and establish an environment to develop storing cognitive skills. Head start was launched in 1965 and was originally made to be like a catch-up summer school that would teach low-income children, in a few weeks what they needed to know to start elementary school. Then there was a head start act in 1981 that expanded the program. Head start is one of the longest-running programs attempting to address the effects of systematic poverty in the United States.
I just really like Head Start because it is a way to provide education to children who may not be ready for elementary school but cannot afford pre-school. This system has been helpful to many children. If this program was not offered, then I believe that many children would have a harder time in school. When they are put to right into elementary school, their parents may not have had enough time with them to teach them everything they needed to know to start school. This original eight-week program has grown throughout the years to help many children.
I know this sounds bad, but I do not really like any social welfare policies that I know of. I think they could all use some work. I know they are all government funded and that there is going to be cuts and more cuts and more, but everything has cuts and everything has raises. I think that more of the policies should be given a ending time, or at least a period where we will give you this federal money and in six months it will stop then you can reapply but you have to wait two months in order to start collecting money again. For this temporary suspension and reapplication I think it should apply in such programs such as: TANF, SNAP, maybe some Housing Voucher programs as well. Or, instead of making a two month waiting period between termination of the initial period and start-up of the second period, maybe we can cut the costs given to people and instead pay someone to go out and check up on these people receiving benefits. I believe more people abuse the system than don’t, and if we could find those people abusing the system then we could give the money to someone who really needs it.
Another thing, someone who is literally homeless and that doesn’t have an address cannot apply for government assistance. These people are the ones who really need the help, they are living on the streets. Maybe there should be a program that if you are really living on the streets that you could give the IDHS people the address of the post office that you think you are going to be closest to. Then when you apply you can just go to the post office every day and instead of having to pay for a P.O. box they can just set aside any mail into a bin that one can use. Another idea, would be having part of the program would be have a P.O. box for these homeless people.
It seems that you have the following concerns about welfare programs:
1) People who need services should get them, but those who don’t need them shouldn’t.
2) People who abuse the system of welfare services should be stopped from abusing it. You think many people are abusing it.
3) People must accept that government programs ebb and wane, and sometimes there will be increases of funding and sometimes decreases, depending upon the priorities of the elected government and the public they represent.
4) Welfare safety net programs should usually be temporary, and people should keep in mind that the assistance they receive is temporary, until they can achieve independence and self-sufficiency.
5) It is important that there be an exchange between people who receive public help and the public who pay for that help; and one legitimate point is that those who supply the support (the tax-paying public) should be able to control some behaviors of those who receive the support (enforcing conformity to some standards of expected behavior, ensuring that people follow the rules).
6) You are also concerned that the persons who are in greatest need for help (such as homeless persons who live in shelters or live rough on the streets) should get it. Actually, that issue you raise of providing such persons with a way to have an address (to facilitate their receipt of resources and help them secure employment) was a topic for a group of students in this class a year ago.
Your use of the example of persons who are homeless and living rough brings to mind the other sorts of persons who are in need of services. There are persons with severe and chronic mental illness, and they are not really likely to be able to support themselves. There are persons with physical impairments or limitations related to health, injury, birth defect, disease, and so forth, where the impairments are so severe that every reasonable person would agree that we as a society cannot expect them to support themselves. Likewise there are persons with a variety of brain conditions, ranging from persons with severe or serious cognitive disabilities or developmental disabilities to persons with mild disabilities, and few of us expect those persons to provide for their own material well-being. Most people no longer think that we as a society should require children to work to provide for their own sustenance, at least not in the USA. And, most of us would like to have our society give elderly persons some years before their deaths in which they could relax without the burdens of providing through labor for their own economic well-being. So, one question to ask yourself is how many of the persons receiving welfare benefits are in these categories where you probably do not expect the recipients to get out and find a job to support themselves.
I think everyone is inclined to agree with your preference that persons who really need services get the services they need, but you are concerned that persons who do not really need services are crowding the system and draining resources. For example, you write that, “ I believe more people abuse the system than don’t.” I’m not sure what your idea of “abuse the system” is, but no doubt it’s something bad, and I think everyone would be opposed to allowing lots of abuse of the welfare system. But, your impression that more than half of persons receiving welfare services and supports are abusing the system is really a perception about a matter of fact, and we can look at research and fact-checking and determine what a plausible estimate of abuse is within the various welfare programs, and also see what sort of persons are committing the abuse. The counts and results will depend much on how we define “abuse,” but I think it is important to investigate this conjecture and see what proportion are abusing the services. You’re raising an important issue. Even those who are far more liberal in their attitudes toward benefits would share your concern that persons who abuse the welfare system are likely to erode public confidence in those programs, and thus damage support for policies that help those who really need the services.
Are persons with significant disabilities and low incomes and few assets able to abuse programs? How many persons receiving benefits could be fairly characterized as having “significant disabilities” and few financial resources? Are persons aged 17 and younger (children) capable of abusing the welfare programs that provide them housing and food and perhaps help their households pay bills? That’s another question we must consider.
For adults without children who have sound bodies and healthy minds, they may of course be thrown into a period of poverty and desperation due to some drastic change in circumstances (they may flee from an abusive and controlling partner who provided all the household income; they may lose their job and be unable to pay debts; they may become ill, lose their jobs, and then recover from their illness in a situation where they are impoverished and unemployed, etc.), and perhaps in those circumstances they really deserve the benefits of a welfare system. But, I think you raise a legitimate question about how long they ought to receive such benefits before we as a society expect them to work and support themselves.
There are also different ideas about “self-support” and freedom and liberty involved with welfare policies, and the ideas may shape how we consider abuse. Some people will look at a situation where a family relies on a social welfare safety net for many years, and no disabilities are present, and call the situation “parasitism” or “welfare dependence” or “abuse of the system” on the assumption that everyone ought to work and earn their own way in life, if they are capable of doing so. Yet, other people may look at a situation like that and say that once a society achieves a certain standard of wealth and abundance, the needs of human liberty and freedom require that workers and potential workers be given a welfare safety net that provides them with the sort of financial security that maximizes their autonomy and freedom, so that they will only work in jobs that are worthwhile and dignified, and only work through their free will, and not because the threat of poverty works like a whip to drive them into whatever job will offer them a chance of survival. From such a perspective, if a society can afford to do so, it ought to give everyone a dignified and secure material life whether or not they are involved in economic activities to pay their own way through life. That’s not your perspective, but it is a perspective that seems to me to have just as much moral authority (on the basis of maximizing human liberty) as your perspective based on a sense of fairness and justice (which makes the reasonable demand that people contribute to their own maintenance if they can, and not live off the labor of others unless such reliance is a last resort and ideally temporary).
There are other perspectives as well. Some people prefer a sort of Social Darwinism in which people must look out for themselves or rely on private charity and family support. Those who have great need and cannot secure adequate support from family or charity are doomed, and that is acceptable to such a perspective. There is also a perspective that may admit that it is a moral problem when people depend on the support from others, and it is vexing to have people live off the public when they could be earning their own keep; but this other perspective claims that if you weigh all the benefits of eliminating poverty and the eradicating the many injustices and harms and problems rooted in poverty by providing everyone who is poor with enough support to bring them out of poverty—if you eliminate poverty—then the benefits and gains to society, and all the blessings a society reaps when it eliminates poverty outweigh all the harms of welfare dependence and people who prefer to live off the labor of others at some modest minimum level rather than working. That is, you are right that it is a problem and injustice for people to abuse the system, but the continued existence of poverty in a society as wealthy as ours is an even bigger problem and injustice, and the gains we take if we have a generous welfare policy that eliminates poverty will be so good that we can overlook the many harms we do to people by allowing them to stagnate in a situation of parasitism and welfare dependence.
These are all things people should consider, and some of these ideas must be rejected if you are going to endorse other ideas. But when we make our choices about what we prefer, we must be aware of what we are rejecting.
