Actually, in the long run, if you look closer, welfare does not help people. It actually hurts them.
First, welfare is an incentive not to work. This incentive increases every time the government increases the recipients' checks. This is just common sense: like if your grandmother gave you $5,000 this month and then increased the check to you next month to $5,500, you probably wouldn't want to work very much, and eventually not at all if the increases kept coming. The point is, the incentive to work fluctuates negatively as welfare increases. The incentives just keep piling up not to work as is evident by the truth that what many middle-class people earn today is less than what some people who have welfare receive. The result is that work is discouraged and relying on others is encouraged.
Since work is discouraged, productivity also falls. This argument is made clear by Richard Fulmer in his article in The Freeman: "As benefits and benefit recipients multiply, and as the number of taxpayers declines, the latter will be less and less able to bear the ever-growing burden. Many of the most productive and adaptable will move to countries that allow them to keep more of their earnings ... While productivity increases can help offset falling production due to a declining workforce, any such increase requires either capital investments or innovative process improvements. As previously explained, however, welfare states discourage capital formation by discouraging savings. Innovation is similarly discouraged by taxes that reduce or eliminate any profits that such innovation might generate."
It is ironic that in a country such as the United States, that we should continue to support the idea of welfare when unemployment is such a hot topic and is at the top of the list of objectives to control by the government, as well as the constant cry of inequality among classes.
Not only does welfare hurt people, but it doesn't help the economy either. In his article "Paying the Unemployed Does Not Stimulate the Economy," in The Freeman, James C. W. Ahiakpor makes a valid argument: "Many in Congress as well as the President and some of his economic advisers have argued that extending the period for paying the unemployed will stimulate the U.S. economy out of its sluggish performance. Would any of them consider as valid an argument that giving money out of their own pockets to an unemployed member of their household would promote the financial prosperity of that household? Would they not correctly see such financial contribution as merely a transfer within the household? Would they also not be eager to nudge the unemployed to get up quickly and find a job? ... So why don’t they apply the same logic to the economy as a whole? The only tenable answer is that they are under the spell of the economic miseducation inflicted on the minds of economists and many among the general population by John Maynard Keynes. They believe that consumer spending drives the economy, without having stopped to consider from where consumers get the means to spend."
Welfare itself stems from a good intention, but it does not bring good outcomes in the end. Welfare means dependence, falling productivity, and as Bono of U2 aptly stated, "a Band-aid. Free enterprise is the cure." In other words, free enterprise brings more opportunity and a higher standard of living than any government can promise or give.
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Since work is discouraged, productivity also falls. This argument is made clear by Richard Fulmer in his article in The Freeman: "As benefits and benefit recipients multiply, and as the number of taxpayers declines, the latter will be less and less able to bear the ever-growing burden. Many of the most productive and adaptable will move to countries that allow them to keep more of their earnings ... While productivity increases can help offset falling production due to a declining workforce, any such increase requires either capital investments or innovative process improvements. As previously explained, however, welfare states discourage capital formation by discouraging savings. Innovation is similarly discouraged by taxes that reduce or eliminate any profits that such innovation might generate."
It is ironic that in a country such as the United States, that we should continue to support the idea of welfare when unemployment is such a hot topic and is at the top of the list of objectives to control by the government, as well as the constant cry of inequality among classes.
Not only does welfare hurt people, but it doesn't help the economy either. In his article "Paying the Unemployed Does Not Stimulate the Economy," in The Freeman, James C. W. Ahiakpor makes a valid argument: "Many in Congress as well as the President and some of his economic advisers have argued that extending the period for paying the unemployed will stimulate the U.S. economy out of its sluggish performance. Would any of them consider as valid an argument that giving money out of their own pockets to an unemployed member of their household would promote the financial prosperity of that household? Would they not correctly see such financial contribution as merely a transfer within the household? Would they also not be eager to nudge the unemployed to get up quickly and find a job? ... So why don’t they apply the same logic to the economy as a whole? The only tenable answer is that they are under the spell of the economic miseducation inflicted on the minds of economists and many among the general population by John Maynard Keynes. They believe that consumer spending drives the economy, without having stopped to consider from where consumers get the means to spend."
Welfare itself stems from a good intention, but it does not bring good outcomes in the end. Welfare means dependence, falling productivity, and as Bono of U2 aptly stated, "a Band-aid. Free enterprise is the cure." In other words, free enterprise brings more opportunity and a higher standard of living than any government can promise or give.
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