Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient
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Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient
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Re: Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient
#2[deleted]
Re: Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient
#3So is it a reasonable conclusion that welfare serves largely as a massive scale corporate subsidy based on this data?
If they've determined that welfare has statistically irrelevant impacts on the # of people participating in the labor force and the # of hours worked that would seem to imply that welfare recipients are still a needed part of the workforce. That would also lead one to believe that welfare is not allowing substantial lifestyle modification or opportunity for self-improvement.
Re: Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient
#4So is it a reasonable conclusion that welfare serves largely as a massive scale corporate subsidy based on this data? If they've determined that welfare has statistically irrelevant impacts on the # of people participating in the labor force and the # of hours worked that would seem to imply that welfare recipients are still a needed part of the workforce. That would also lead one to believe that welfare is not allow…
Here are some additional factors to consider:
Number of people being irrelevant might mean that a welfare recipient doesn't work but enables someone else to work, or if someone doesn't get welfare, they work, but their support is withdrawn from someone else. It could also mean that the benefit is not enough for them to consider not working. That is to say that their ambitions are greater than merely surviving, the enabling of which is the foundational goal of a reasonable welfare program.
I think I would agree that welfare is a corporate subsidy in some sense, but it covers more people than corporations would without the subsidy, including people unable to work or for whom paid work is less beneficial than some uncompensated task.
Re: Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient
#5So is it a reasonable conclusion that welfare serves largely as a massive scale corporate subsidy based on this data? If they've determined that welfare has statistically irrelevant impacts on the # of people participating in the labor force and the # of hours worked that would seem to imply that welfare recipients are still a needed part of the workforce. That would also lead one to believe that welfare is not allow…
In fact in the poorest countries this money is often used to buy the means to increase productivity; i.e. buy a sewing machine to make and sell clothes, buy a goat for milking for consumption as well as sale. It is quite often also used so that the family is able to support itself while also sending their children to school instead of sending them to the fields; again another form of increased productivity, albeit in the future.
Another point to raise is that in poorer parts of the world there is far less, proportionally, that is provided by corporations, large or small.
Re: Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient
#6[deleted]
Re: Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient
#7One issue is that it can be difficult to be both lazy and a fully engaged welfare recipient. Given the complexity of eligibility proof and maintaining eligibility for various services (social security, medicaid/medicare, food stamp policies, child welfare services, child support...) participation in the Welfare World could come to occupy all of the time and working memory of its users apart from time spent avoiding the other perils of the lower class world (drugs, evictions, crime). In a science fictionesque version, a majority of people are caught slogging through socialist welfare calculus while a select few ayn randian figures rise above and create empires of capitalism to cushion themourselves from the black hole dystopian welfare system sucking down higher and higher socioeconomic ranks. Luckily, I don't think things are that bad.
Re: Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient
#8Welfare is really an economic stabilizer, in the same vein as "printing money," lowering interest rates, and raising taxes.
It's a macroeconomic tool government uses to keep the economy stable. It has nothing to do with laziness.
Re: Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient
#9[deleted]
Re: Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient
#10Welfare is really an economic stabilizer, in the same vein as "printing money," lowering interest rates, and raising taxes. It's a macroeconomic tool government uses to keep the economy stable. It has nothing to do with laziness.
We heard you the first time.