Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient

While I don't really believe in the "Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient" (they exist, in tiny numbers, and are likely irrelevant to economic outcomes due to being rare), I don't think this paper has proved what its title claimed. It's a great piece of research, but it is fundamentally about the situation in developing nations, which are capital-poor and, precisely as we would anticipate, infusions of capital into a capital-poor economy have a strongly positive impact.

To draw any conclusions about "welfare recipients", we would need similar data and research to be done in the wealthy nations. To the best of my knowledge, the reason why this hasn't happened is because nobody's run these experiments at sufficient scale in those nations (a few uncontrolled trials have been run, but on the scale of 10-20 people, and we need thousands). We should run that experiment and find out for sure.

Just read through Businessweek and the Wall Street Journal in 1999 and 2000. Like this article - http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_44/b3653163.htm . What were the people who control capital, who control employment worrying about? That too many people who wanted to work were working. It's stated quite openly in that article and others.

What a laugh that when the people who control employment are openly working to make more people unemployed, to then take some nonsensical ideas out of Christian churches about morality and laziness, and try to delude people into thinking this applies to those they just openly worked to cause to be unemployed.

Then there's the heirs who live in mansions, who haven't worked in generations. The "job creators". Or really the parasites who expropriate so much surplus labor time from those who do work, that they spend generation to generation jetting from Aspen to Monte Carlo. These are the real parasites, not those they're openly conspiring to shove out of work, who are using food stamps to buy food.

can you link to any such research? that's a topic I'd love to read more about, but don't know where to start even. thx!

A few additional points:

1) Based on what I've read, some welfare programs originally were designed to encourage poor women to stay home and take care of their kids, as if parenting was a priority for people or our society.

2) The whole meme seems no different than the myth of the 'Welfare Queen' in the 1980s (or thereabouts). I've never seen data supporting it.

3) The premise is an assumption or fear (maybe a paranoia) that people are naturally incredibly lazy, that given the option they will do nothing with their lives, and that they are motivated only or primarily by money. I don't think that's realistic. Would you take more money to be a janitor? To watch soap operas all day? Managers who have some sophistication understand that people have intrinsic motivations unrelated to money, and in fact adding the extrinsic motivations (e.g., monetary incentives) can harm the intrinsic ones and reduce productivity. People have many limitations and motivations unrelated to money.

4) Research I encountered many years ago said that most welfare recipients don't do it for the long-term; instead people end up in the programs for short periods when needed.

5) Other research I saw more recently said a leading cause of people being in welfare programs is loss of their assets due to healthcare costs. Also, I think it's widely accepted that mental illness is a leading cause of homelessness.

6) At least a small body of research says that the most effective charity is to simply give recipients money directly; generally they use it well (and overhead is much less). See GiveDirectly (https://www.givedirectly.org/).

Finally, I don't think people mean it this way, but let's step back and and think: What have we become when we respond to the weakest and poorest by persecuting them and calling them lazy.

How many people here have any experience with or expertise with welfare programs?