Did Welfare Reform Increase Extreme Poverty in the United States?

Two decades ago, on August 22, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, popularly known as welfare reform, into law. At the time, liberals proclaimed that the bill would slash the incomes of one in five families with children and push 2.6 million people into poverty.[1] Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously predicted that the bill would leave children scavenging in the streets, “sleeping on grates, picked up in the morning frozen.”

In fact, reform cut welfare caseloads by over 50 percent, employment of the least-skilled single mothers surged, and the poverty rates of black children and single-parent families dropped rapidly to historic lows.[3] Doomsday prophets were utterly discredited. Reform was very popular with the public.

Remarkably, 20 years later, Moynihan’s alarm about “children sleeping on grates” has been revived. The left now contends...

Read more at Heritage.org
Hat tip: John H. Detweiler - "According to chart two, 89% of families living in extreme poverty have cell phones." Read More......

Relief of Poverty: Four Centuries of Futility

More than 400 years ago, the British adopted the Poor Law system, under which local communities were made responsible for the relief of poverty. For the next four centuries the Poor Laws were amended again and again, as the following argument went to and fro: Was the system providing necessary relief or was it in various ways interfering with the natural workings of the labor market by subsidizing idleness and encouraging indolence.
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Majority of Immigrant Households Are on Welfare

A new report by my colleague Steven Camarota finds that most immigrant households use welfare. That immigrants receive taxpayer-funded benefits at higher rates than the native-born isn’t a new finding. But previous research (including by CIS) has never found such a high rate. The reason is that Camarota used a different Census Bureau data source, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), that is more difficult to use but, as its name suggests, provides the most comprehensive view of welfare use (a.k.a “program participation”).


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Obama Blames Rich People Like Him For The Country's Poor

Welfare: President Obama talked this week about poverty, a subject he should know a lot about, since he's done such a good job of expanding it. Instead, he offered only fact-challenged and badly misguided ideas.


Earlier this week, Obama was part of a panel discussion on poverty hosted by Georgetown University and attended by Catholics and evangelical Christians.


He started off OK. "I think we can all stipulate that the best anti-poverty program is a job," he said, and "we don't dispute that the free market is the greatest producer of wealth in history."


Read more at Investor's Business Daily


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Singapore Has Found A Workable Alternative to the Welfare State

Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, died last week at age 91. Almost every obituary has remarked on the radical transition his leadership heralded. As John Fund wrote at National Review: “By embracing free trade, capital formation, vigorous meritocratic education, low taxes, and a reliable judicial system, Lee raised the per capita income of his country from $500 a year to some $52,000 a year today. That’s 50 percent higher than that of Britain, the colonial power that ruled Singapore for 150 years. Its average annual growth rate has averaged 7 percent since the 1970s.”

 

Part of the reason for Singapore’s remarkable climb up the international income ladder is bread and butter capitalism.

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32 Year Old Woman on Why She Abuses Welfare, Doesn’t Work, and Happily Takes Your Money

A woman named Lucy called in to a Texas radio station as they were discussing welfare abuse. What happened would surprise anyone. Not that this happens – just how proud this woman is of it. Lucy proceeds to laugh at taxpayers like they are suckers taking bait and proceeds to detail her marijuana usage and laziness. She admits that her parents and most likely her children will also take advantage of living this lazy, no-work life.

Listen to the video clip at TTPN
(Hat tip: John) Read More......

The Robin Hood Fallacy: Piketty Would Take from the Rich to Give to the Poor

FOUNDRY, by Stephen Moore - In public policy, bad ideas—no matter how many times they have been discredited—never completely go away. They seem to pop up over and over. Enter the hot new book that has captured the imagination and attention of the left because it endorses an 80 percent tax rate on the rich in the name of “leveling” incomes. ✧ The book is entitled “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by French economist Thomas Piketty, and in addition to 1970s-style tax rates, he wants a new wealth tax on the rich and more money for social welfare programs. He’s being treated like the modern-day Adam Smith by the media [THE LEFT]. ✧ The way to create a more equal distribution of income, apparently, is by making everyone poorer. Piketty warns that “meritocratic extremism”—which is another way of saying you get to keep the fruits of your labor—is ruining our nation’s economy and if we don’t divide the pie more equally, the result could be “truly frightening.” He says that his goal is to “save capitalism… [ahem]”

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Our State of Police

America does not have a police state. Yet. East Germany had a police state. Syria has a police state. In police states, the government is afraid of the people. Our government is not all that afraid of us. Despite the liberal paranoia about militias and assault rifles, the training drills and TV shows where survivalists overrun the country, the people in charge don't wake up every morning worrying about a revolution. If they did, then two people in your neighborhood would be informing on you weekly.

Read more at the Sultan Knish Blog Read More......

TII: Let’s Privatize the Welfare State

By John C. Goodman
Have you ever given money to the food stamp program? Do you know anyone who has? ✧ Actually, some people do occasionally make gifts to federal entitlement programs. But gifts to the entire federal government were a paltry $241 million in 2010, the last year for which statistics are available. ✧ By contrast, Americans donated almost $300 billion last year to private sector charities in addition to volunteer time valued at $158 billion. ✧ The money we spend on food stamps (technically called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) almost all comes from coercive taxation, rather than charitable contributions. EXCELLENT ARTICLE! Keep reading at the Independent Institute... Read More......

CATO: 2013 Work Versus Welfare Trade-Off

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In 1995, the Cato Institute published a groundbreaking study, The Work vs. Welfare Trade-Off, which estimated the value of the full package of welfare benefits available to a typical recipient in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It found that not only did the value of such benefits greatly exceed the poverty level but, because welfare benefits are tax-free, their dollar value was greater than the amount of take-home income a worker would receive from an entry-level job.

Since then, many welfare programs have undergone significant change, including the 1996 welfare reform legislation that ended the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program and replaced it with the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. Accordingly, this paper examines the current welfare system in the same manner as the 1995 paper.

Welfare benefits continue to outpace the income that most recipients can expect to earn from an entry-level job, and the balance between welfare and work may actually have grown worse in recent years.

The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work. Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour. If Congress and state legislatures are serious about reducing welfare dependence and rewarding work, they should consider strengthening welfare work requirements, removing exemptions, and narrowing the definition of work. Moreover, states should consider ways to shrink the gap between the value of welfare and work by reducing current benefit levels and tightening eligibility requirements.

Read the Analysis of the Total Level of Welfare Benefits by State (PDF) by Michael Tanner, Senior Fellow, and Charles Hughes, Research Assistant, of the CATO Institute Read More......

On government spending, GOP faces a reckoning

(Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) It is not surprising that House Republicans have chosen to embrace sequestration’s arbitrary reductions and promote even harsher cuts to government health and education services. Reducing government’s size has been the central goal of the conservative coalition in Congress for at least a decade. ✧ But the so-called sequester may well be the beginning of the end of the budget wars that have long gripped Washington, because Republicans may soon face an electoral reckoning they cannot overcome. The rising coalition of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, women and young people that helped reelect President Obama does not share the anti-government sentiment of the conservative base. Time is running out for those on the right who are seeking to slash the size of government. Read more at the Washington Post...

Related: Chicks on the Right: This Is Conservatism's Biggest Challenge Read More......

Morning Bell: The End of Welfare Reform As We Know It

The Obama Administration made yet another end run around Congress last week—this time, to gut the successful welfare reform law of 1996. If this is allowed to stand, it will mean rewinding years of progress that lifted millions out of poverty. Read more by Amy Payne at Morning Bell... Read More......

Senate GOP to fight abuses of welfare cash

Salem, OR – Senate Republicans will continue to push legislation that can safeguard the integrity of Oregon’s public assistance programs. Data recently released to The Oregonian revealed disturbing evidence of misuse of these funds. In an effort to protect programs for needy Oregon families, Republicans introduced legislation in 2011 to require drug testing for individuals on public assistance.

Read more at Oregon Catalyst Read More......

Put me in charge . . .

Waco Tribune Herald (Requires subscription), Waco, TX, 11/18/2010 (Via email/Hat tip: Patricia Anderson)
Put me in charge of food stamps. I’d get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho’s, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and piercings. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, smoke or get tats and piercings, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your “home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good.”

Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be “demeaning” and ruin their “self esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

AND While you are on Gov’t subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov’t welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.

This was written by a 21 yr old female who gets it. These solutions are just common sense in her opinion.
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Is registering the poor to vote un-American?

By Matthew Vadum (Hat tip: JHD)- Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote? ✧ Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Read more at American Thinker...

Note the difference between what Cloward & Piven want(ed) to achieve and what Thomas Sowell knows will lift the poor out of poverty in his recent article "Two Different Worlds." --bc Read More......

Lest we become bankrupt...

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.” Cicero – 55 BC
(Hat tip: Shawn/OC) Read More......

Recession Ends in France, Without Massive and Costly U.S.-Style Stimulus Package

OPEN MARKET.ORG, 8/13/2009 by Hans Bader - France’s conservative President adopted a much smaller $31 billion stimulus package, which, unlike Obama’s, was focused on productive investment, not welfare or social services. $14.5 billion of France’s stimulus package was earmarked for injection “into private sector enterprises.” Billions more were for investments in infrastructure, construction projects, and railways. Read more at Open Markets...

Republicans ask Obama to pay the unspent stimulus money back to the people and reduce the nation's debt. Read More......

Obama: The Grand Strategy

WASHINGTON POST, 4/24/2009, by Charles Krauthammer (H/t: John H. Detweiler) - Unified theory of Obamaism, fifth (final?) installment: In the service of his ultimate mission -- the leveling of social inequalities -- President Obama offers a tripartite social democratic agenda: nationalized health care, federalized education (ultimately guaranteed through college) and a cash-cow carbon tax (or its equivalent) to subsidize the other two. ∴ Problem is, the math doesn't add up. Not even a carbon tax would pay for Obama's vastly expanded welfare state. Nor will Midwest Democrats stand for a tax that would devastate their already crumbling region. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

Sharon Jasper reports on substandard public housing

Received by email, 3/6/2009 - Snopes.com categorizes this satirical story as "Multiple," meaning that it is partly true. Snopes' refutations, however, are directed at an earlier and much longer version of the story that contained manufactured information which is not presented below. Snopes does explain the Housing Choice Voucher Program (section 8), which is helpful.

Welfare just ain't what it used to be

Sharon Jasper has been victimized. Sharon Jasper has been rabidly wronged. She has become a Section 8 care case -- the victim of ever changing public housing policies. Sharon Jasper has spent 57 of her 58 years dedicated to one cause and one cause only, and has nothing to show for her dedicated servitude. She has lived in Section 8 housing all but 1 of her 58 years. It was a legacy passed down from her parents who moved into Section 8 housing in 1949 when she was six months old. She has passed the legacy down to her children, but fears they may have to get jobs to pay for the utilities and deposits. She laments about her one year hiatus from the comfort of her Section 8 nirvana, "I tried it for a year -- you know, working and all. It's not anything I would want to go through again, or wish on anyone in my family, but I am damn proud of that year."





Sharon was moved out of her St. Bernard housing project after hurricane Katrina and into a new, yet albeit, substandard quarterage. As can be noted from the above photo of her new Section 8 home, it is repugnant and not suitable for someone of Sharon's seniority status in the system. "Don't be fooled by them hardwood floors," says Sharon. They told me they were putting in scraped wood floors cause it was more expensive and elegant, but I am not a fool -- that was just a way to make me take scratched up wood because I am black. The 60 inch HD TV? It may look nice but it is not a plasma. It's not a plasma because I'm black . Now they want me to pay a deposit and utilities on this dump. Do you know why?"

She has held her tongue in silence through the years of abuse by the system, but it came to a head at the New Orleans ' city council meeting where discussions were under way about the tearing down of the St. Bernard projects. When a near riotous exchange between groups opposing the tearing down of St. Bernard and groups wanting the dilapidated buildings torn down and newer ones built, Sharon unleashed verbal hell with her once silenced tongue. The object of her oratory prowess was an acquiescent poor white boy in attendance. The context of her scathing rebuke was, "Just because you pay for my house, my car, my big screen and my food, I will not be treated like a slave!" and "Back up and Shut up! Shut up, white boy! Shut up, white boy!"

Recapping from the mental log of the city council minutes in her head, Sharon repines, "Our families have been displaced all over the United States. They are being forced to commit crimes in cities they are unfamiliar with. It is a very uncomfortable situation for them. Bring them back, then let's talk about redevelopment."

Sharon directs the reporter's attention across the street to Duncan Plaza where homeless people are living in tents and states that, "I might do better out there with one of these tents." She further lamented her sentiments about her situation, "I might be poor, but I don't have to live poor." (H/t: Hawthorne)

(Photo below the fold) Read More......