Government-Run Welfare
Government-Run welfare
The current use of government-run welfare systems is an ineffective and inefficient way to help solve poverty and unemployment in urban areas. Flawed in almost every way, it requires immediate improvement and attention, and could be improved with privatization of many welfare programs, including prisons, charity and housing. Welfare can be improved in more ways than one, and one of the biggest problems in need of a fix is the government’s attitude toward the programs they run. Welfare may have been created with good intentions, but it has failed to meet its stated goal of reducing poverty. Many critics of the welfare system charge that providing a steady income to the needy encourages idleness, resulting in very little improvement in the employment rate of those receiving benefits from the government. Not only that, but the recipients don’t receive any special attention from the government, or incentives to become employed, resulting in a downward spiral of problems too big for money alone to solve.
Private efforts have been much more successful than the federal government's failed attempt at charity. America is the most generous nation on earth. Americans already contribute more than $125 billion annually to charity. Private charities have been more successful than government welfare for several reasons. First, private charities are able to individualize their approach to the circumstances of poor people in ways that governments can never do. Government regulations must be designed to treat all similarly situated recipients alike. Glenn C. Loury of Boston University explains the difference between welfare and private charities on that point. "Because citizens have due process rights which cannot be fully abrogated . . . public judgments must be made in a manner that can be defended after the fact, sometimes even in court." The result is that most government programs rely on the simple provision of cash or other goods and services
The current use of government-run welfare systems is an ineffective and inefficient way to help solve poverty and unemployment in urban areas. Flawed in almost every way, it requires immediate improvement and attention, and could be improved with privatization of many welfare programs, including prisons, charity and housing. Welfare can be improved in more ways than one, and one of the biggest problems in need of a fix is the government’s attitude toward the programs they run. Welfare may have been created with good intentions, but it has failed to meet its stated goal of reducing poverty. Many critics of the welfare system charge that providing a steady income to the needy encourages idleness, resulting in very little improvement in the employment rate of those receiving benefits from the government. Not only that, but the recipients don’t receive any special attention from the government, or incentives to become employed, resulting in a downward spiral of problems too big for money alone to solve.
Private efforts have been much more successful than the federal government's failed attempt at charity. America is the most generous nation on earth. Americans already contribute more than $125 billion annually to charity. Private charities have been more successful than government welfare for several reasons. First, private charities are able to individualize their approach to the circumstances of poor people in ways that governments can never do. Government regulations must be designed to treat all similarly situated recipients alike. Glenn C. Loury of Boston University explains the difference between welfare and private charities on that point. "Because citizens have due process rights which cannot be fully abrogated . . . public judgments must be made in a manner that can be defended after the fact, sometimes even in court." The result is that most government programs rely on the simple provision of cash or other goods and services