Conservative view
Being on welfare hurts people. For their own good, as well as the good of society, we must motivate them to get
off welfare and into the work force. |
Liberal view
True, but we must also provide the necessary support to enable people to do this: child care, education, job training,
etc. |
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The Progressive Schoolhouse view
True and true, as long as you are looking at individual people. However, in the big picture, does motivating and
equipping people to reenter the job market actually increase the number of available jobs, or make them any better
paying? No. Our economic system is a game of musical chairs, and
helping the players to be better at finding chairs doesn't change the number of players that will still end up
without a chair when the music ends. If someone who didn't have a job before manages to find one, that
only means that someone else loses that job or doesn't get it, and ends up with a worse job or no job at all.
All those heartwarming stories in the news about former welfare recipients who are now working and (rightly) feeling
so much better about themselves never reveal this other part of the big picture, do they?
If anything, adding more people to the scramble for jobs will only increase the competition for each job, and that
could allow employers to pay the lucky few who get the jobs even less than before! Also, the conservative leaders
of this country can now start to cut back on how much money we invest in the social safety net for those who end
up without a decent job, because everyone is supposedly being helped off of welfare. In reality, of course, the
unemployment rate isn't going to change by a lot, and all those McDonald's level jobs aren't going to suddenly
start paying a living wage, so eventually, the welfare rolls will begin to grow again. Only then, the social safety
net that will have to support all the people falling down through the cracks again will be much smaller.
It has been said that when conservatives say they want to reform something, they really mean they want to destroy
it! |
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