Why Welfare Is Necessary

2 + 2 is on my mind . . .

Have you ever heard someone say "Those lazy welfare people! They'd rather be on welfare than working! I'm tired of my hard earned money going to them!" Well, lets take a look at the issue and see whether or not it matters if they are lazy and would rather be on welfare or not.

What the Numbers Are

If you don’t like numbers, just skip down to the heading “What the Numbers Mean”. If you don’t mind thinking about numbers, here are some to chew on. Currently in the United States of America, unemployment is just under ten percent: 14,000,000 unemployed people as of June, 2009 (people receiving unemployment benefits). Also, lets consider people who are working part-time but want and need full-time work: 9,000,000 as of May, 2009. There are another 2,200,000 people who want full time work and have looked at some point in the last twelve months.

Now lets look at some poverty rate numbers. The newest information I can find on-line is from 2007. In that year, it was reported that 12.5% of Americans were in poverty. That’s 37,500,000 people.

What The Numbers Tell Us

These numbers tell us that there are at least 62,700,000 people in the United States that are either receiving unemployment, are under employed or receiving welfare of one sort or another.

Some of you might want to say “Fuzzy Math!! Fuzzy Math!”. Okay, to make my point, I’ll cut the number in half: Lets say the numbers really add up to 31,350,000 receiving unemployment and/or welfare. Fair enough? Great!

Now in order to say that these people are lazy instead of working, there would have to be at least 31,350,000 vacant job openings in the United States, right? Think about it. In order to say people are making a choice there has to be more than one thing to choose from right? If you are saying people are lazy instead of working, working has to be a choice, right?

Lets flip things around. Lets assume for the sake of the discussion that tomorrow morning, all the people on welfare woke up trained in some job skill, ready and willing to work. What then?

Is it reasonable to believe that most will find full time work? part time work?
Is it reasonable to believe that there are 30 million vacant jobs? 15 million vacant jobs?

Isn't reasonable to acknowledge that in our society, we have more people than jobs?

Since it is obvious to any fair minded person that we don't have 60, 30 or even 15 million vacant jobs, does it matter if folks on welfare are motivated or not? Perhaps those on welfare that aren't motivated to get off are happier than those on welfare that can't find a way off, who can say.

Why Welfare Is Necessary

The bottom line is that people need to eat, need shelter, clothing and healthcare. Since our society doesn't provide enough jobs for all people who can work, those that can't find work need to do something to meet their basic needs.

Imagine if we didn't have welfare. Since there aren't enough jobs for everyone, what would people without jobs turn to in order to meet their basic needs? Would crime go up? Would we see an increase in organized crime? Black markets? Prostitution? Isn't possible that we'd also see an increase in rioting, looting and a lose of the rule of law in some areas?

When we think through the alternatives to welfare, we begin to understand the real necessity of it as a socially stabilizing institution.

A Possible Solution: Creating Full Employment

The obvious solution to eliminating the need for welfare is to greatly increase the number of jobs available to Americans.

What if we raised tariffs on imported goods to the point of those goods being as expensive to import as they would be to manufacture here in America? Trade imbalances in manufacturing have accounted for 59% of the decline in manufacturing employment since 1998. In fact, just in the period between 1998 and 2003, America lost 3 million manufacturing jobs due to imports.

Imagine if we brought back our textile industries, our steel production and foundries, our auto parts manufacturing, production of televisions, refrigerators, cell phones, washers and dryers, bicycles -- the list goes on and on.

In 1978, there were approximately 19 million manufacturing jobs in the US. In 2008, there were approximately 10 million manufacturing jobs. We can also expect that if we were to bring back those 9 million lost manufacturing jobs, those jobs would spawn an additional 2 or 3 million more jobs. Working people spend money.

Lets assume, for the sake of our discussion, that tomorrow morning we woke up, the tariffs are in place and all these lost manufacturing jobs, plus those secondary jobs, are back. That would be a job increase of 11 million jobs. Very fuzzy math here, I admit it, but it is the concept, the principle that I'm presenting that is most important.

Lets assume, also, for the sake of our discussion, that the recession is over and that the 14 million folks on unemployment are back to work. So now we have a total of 25 million people working who previously weren't. Remember my initial figure of unemployed, under-employed and those on welfare?

60 million. 60 million people unemployed, under-employed and on welfare. With an additional 25 million jobs, we'd still have 35 million people out of work.

For the sake of our discussion, lets assume that tomorrow morning all the illegal immigrants are back in their country of origin. Lets assume all of them are working (they aren't but lets say they are). 17 million more minimum wage jobs. Still leaves about 18 million folks on welfare.

One more thing we could do if we were interesting in getting folks off of welfare would be to redefine full time employment as 35 hours per week and to make it illegal to work more than 35 hours per week for hourly employees.

If we take all the jobs we've created under this fantasy plan (42 million), reduce a work week to 35 hours, we can create 6 million more jobs (5 hours from every worker, so every 7 workers equals 35 hours, or one additional job).

We sill have 11 million folks on welfare. If we were to apply the 35 work week to all the hourly jobs in America, not just those we created in our fantasy plan, we just might create enough jobs for everyone.

Conclusion

Still think welfare folk would rather be on welfare than working? Even if you're right, what does it matter? There are more people than possible jobs. Unless you are willing to institute these or similar radical ideas to actually give people on welfare a chance to get off, why not leave them alone?

Being on welfare sucks.

Thanks for reading my blog.....