Talk:Welfare (financial aid)

The Problem With the Page

There is no single program, or set of policies that can be termed "welfare." The page should basically be deleted, or replaced by links to specific programs, (such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which is what comes to my mind when most people say "welfare." 72.191.184.2 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:01, 8 May 2009 (UTC).

Unwillingness to work

A while ago this was in the article. I think most people upon seeing it would dismiss it immediately as a reason you could get it. But, I wonder, can you? I was reading a site once that talked about how 100 years ago people thought people would be perfectly content if they could get food, water and shelter for free. And, it talked about how any welfare bum in Canada can. I would suspect if this is true you can get it for this reason then it would only exist in the more smaller countries. Although, you be considered a lazy person and ridiculed as such, but is it possible? The snare (talk) 03:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

If that were to happen, then the state/country would go bankrupt. I think it's already happening in the USA though. :-( 21:11, 17 April 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Punkymonkey987 (talk • contribs)

Dollar figure

The following sentence fragment:

 Federal welfare and public assistance spending, which can reach to over 400 billion dollars annually...

does not appear to be supported by the link given, unless I'm misunderstanding something. The audit given reports that number as the total amount of grants to non-federal entities, a pretty general-sounding category to me, and reading through the documents there, it is clear that they are not all somehow related to public assistance. I'm changing it until someone can give a better reference. Xezlec 19:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Childcare

Don't forget childcare, at least in the US. Hyacinth 04:12, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Further reading

Currently, the Further Reading section occupies a full half of the article! Perhaps some trimming is required? -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:10, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Subsidies to help the poor

See Talk:Subsidy for some ideas, under the heading Subsidies to help the poor. Some is relevant to this article. --Singkong2005 05:28, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion

What about adding information about the welfare in different countries around the world? / Kristoffer

Welfare in USA

Since this Wikipedia article seems to take welfare for granted, I think it needs to be pointed out that some people have been actively opposing the very existance of welfare. The President George W. Bush said he was going to help people get jobs, that not true. More people are out of work now then ever. Most people wamts to get off of welfare, but they can't because of no job experience and no work. . This is a serious problem, so to be an information source maybe the article shoud mention that there are threats to welfare. -- Chuck Marean 16:36, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the article "takes welfare for granted." It does describe it as an existing social service, which it is. Perhaps you feel the mention of welfare reform could be expanded here? (However, I don't think you are correctly interpreting the President's speach, but that's not really relevant here) --ZimZalaBim (talk) 21:05, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

What Bush seems to be saying is that welfare recipients should perform some work or undergo training - this is not the same as saying welfare per se should be abolished. Some people DO advocate the complete abolition of welfare (which has been around in one form or other for thousands of years, though not always provided by the state) Exile 22:05, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Could I just point out that the bold opening statement "Welfare is financial assistance paid to people by governments" is incorrect. 'Welfare' in this context is specific to North America. European English (UK & Ireland) uses terms like 'social security' as does Australian English. While we understand what Americans mean by 'welfare' and 'being on the welfare', the use of this word is culture-specific and not simply a global term as the article imples. A simple clarification to point out that this is a north American perspective would help here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Toxteth o'grady (talk • contribs) 13:42, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, the very word welfare has such a vastly different meaning in the US than in, for instance, Finland, I think there should be separate articles (i.e. Welfare in the United States, Welfare in Nordic countries, Welfare in Europe, Welfare in Latin America, etc.). Welfare in Europe would only need a hatnote to indicate the Welfare in Nordic countries article, which is sufficiently distinct to have its own article, as is Welfare in the United States. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 15:44, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

Sweet Jesus this article has been vandalized. I'm editing it. Hesperides 17:33, 5 D6 (UTC)

Poor article

This remains one of the worst politico-economic articles on Wikipedia. There are no citations, it's poorly written and explained, and doesn't flow. I will do my best to improve it, but we really need the help of some expert economists. Walton monarchist89 11:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I concur, but I'm not an economist and I don't know any who'd be interested in helping out Wikipedia! I'm busy with Lawyer and Expressway and Freeway, which is hard enough because these are all contentious topics. --Coolcaesar 17:46, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

As of now this is still one of the worst articles that I've ever seen on Wiki. There are so many things which are US-centric that I wouldn't know where to start and I don't even live in the US. This article and directly related articles need task-force attention. But a main problem is that the subject is so politically loaded in all developed countries that it would be a super magnet for vandalism and political extremists of all sorts.--TGC55 (talk) 23:35, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Flat Broke with Children

I encourage everyone interested in this topic to read Sharon Hays' excellent scholarly study, Flat Broke with Children, out from Oxford University Press. It's one of the most disturbing and well-researched books I've read on the subject, especially in how it shows the institution of welfare having a highly negative impact on children, too many of whom never grow up to adjust to normal society. Since this is a messy article that needs further scholarly buttressing, I've referenced Hays' scholarship by adding the following paragraph:

"Studies have shown that women on welfare have a higher incidence of behavioral problems among their children, including the onset of criminal behavior in the teen years, often involving the abuse of meth amphetamine and other drugs. While welfare reform in the U.S. over the past 15-to-20 years has sought to push welfare mothers into the workforce, in actuality very few former welfare mothers are ever able to find long-term, sustainable employment. This is true even for the welfare mother who has gone back to school for a higher degree. Welfare mothers usually face a crisis when the youngest child turns 18 and the mothers are removed from the welfare rolls."Qworty 10:57, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much for this important reference, for your contributions to this article, and also for our offsite email exchange. What I find so sick and shocking about these cases, and the case you identified, is the image of the fifteen-year-old girl wandering down the streets of that California beach town completely strung out on meth, and her mother sitting at home strung out on prescription pills and blaming EVERYBODY ELSE for her problems and the mess she has made of her life and her children's lives, and still unable to get a sustainable job of any sort, despite being nearly 50 years old. Just sitting there blaming everybody else! I am very concerned about children from broken, welfare-mother homes who grow up to have criminal/drug lifestyles. It is so sad, because it seems these children have been brought into the world only to do evil and to make it an even worse place. And the other kid having to drop out of high school after being beaten up by all the other kids for being a molester--absolutely terrible. Thank you for the important contributions you are making with this issue--I look forward to reading more about it, both here and in your other work.Geri Litton 23:01, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Geri. I agree with everything you've said about the shocking facts in cases like these. What is so sad is that the evidence shows that, in the welfare-mothering continuum, each generation is actually worse off than the previous one, both spiritually and materially, with the potential increase in drugs and criminality that you mention. These are uncomfortable facts in the cases you mention, but the facts are publicly available and must be put out there. There is plenty of legal and police documentation--LexisNexis, BTW, is an excellent resource if you can afford it. Fortunately, I can. Take care. Qworty 23:09, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I was just thinking--in addition to all of your other work in this area, have you ever considered starting a blog on this specific topic? You can get a free one on blogspot. The polka-dot background can be a bit distracting, but the seriousness of the topic would soon overcome that limitation. On your new blog, you could cite the specific cases you are talking about here, the ones you have found through LexisNexis and your other sources, and you could invite others like me to participate in the discussions about these specific cases and case studies. It would be very good to have a repository to read about the actual case histories of the kinds of children and mothers you are talking about. (Those ones from California are truly disturbing.) Then, after you'd accumulated a certain amount of information on your blog, you could then use that blog and its referenced documentation as sources for adding to this article, "Welfare (financial aid)," and then it would become a much better article, which we all agree it needs to become. So, it would be a great way to improve the article. What do you think? Geri Litton 10:02, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Let me make sure I'm understanding what you're saying here. My intention, apart from improving the article here, has been to publish a national article on this topic presenting all of the relevant research, all of the names and dates. Are you suggesting that, in addition to this, I start a blog where I can store all of this public information and then ask others to contribute information as well? That sounds like a fantastic idea! All of the research I have is public information--the teenage girl wandering the streets stoned out of her mind on meth, the kid who assaulted his friend's brother and then had to flee to the East Coast, the mother and her sister popping the prescription pills while living on welfare, the self-admitted overnight stay in the psych ward of the hospital, the junkie grandmother who became a prostitute rather than go on welfare--along with all of the relevant sociological studies full of many similar examples of the downward spiral caused by welfare--but I'm sure there are many others, like yourself, with their own ideas on this research who would be willing to participate in a blog. Then we could gather all of our sources, all of the citations with the names and dates, and use them to build up the article we are talking about here--Welfare (financial aid). Thank you for this excellent idea! Qworty 12:55, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, the "two people" having the above "exchange" are pretty obviously one person engaging in sockpuppetry intended to promote their biased anti-welfare views. Not an unusual tactic for these types to engage in. --Nat (talk) 03:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the following sentence, which I think is borderline incomprehensible, and which makes even less sense in the context of the paragraph it appeared in--if anyone wants it put back in, please let me know what you think it means and we can rewrite it:

"The justification for financial assistance to such individuals often cites the requirement for existing financial resources in order to attain tertiary education that would allow individuals to gain more opportunity for education and better employment resulting in higher income, and thus end their need for public assistance or what is known as welfare."

This article is a real mess. Qworty 07:45, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Qworty. I turned to this article to get a simple history/exposition of how welfare operates in the US (comparison with other countries would be nice too). We do not need all the political baggage except concise statements as to how the system has been criticized/appreciated. "Corporate welfare" is as noted. simply a sarcastic term, no need for it here. Wikipedia IS an encyclopedia, not the OpEd page.Cherrywood 17:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

WOW so biased this info is

Wikipedia, I was so sad to read this article. Whom ever wrote it and has been editing it should be ashamed of them self. I am very fimular with the system both a ex user and working in the system. A lot of what is being said here is just plan spitful. It really should be honestly restudied and then rewritten.

spell check buddy--75.42.92.157 (talk) 07:07, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The article as it currently stands is not bad. It's surprisingly free of POV considering the subject matter. I expected a worse article. I'm completely pro-welfare, so if this was a badly-biased NPOV article, I'd definitely notice and complain. But it's not, for the most part. --Nat (talk) 04:00, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Biased? The article states what's going on with welfare (in relation to the USA). They are the only industrialized country without an universal public health care system and very low standard in unemployment benefits. The Reagan-Bush-Newt-Clinton era emphasized the lack of protection for the poor or unemployed, a social conservative business morality allowed corporations to decide ones' socioeconomic fate, and the "baby-boomer liberal" promotion of poverty among the ever-rising underclass of Americans (the historical poor in rural areas). Both the left and right exploited the fears of lower-middle class, working-class whites and poor urban blacks for so long, the US government began to "roll back" on welfare in favor of spending on military expenditures for the last decade of the cold war, plus we're still paying for the Vietnam war and you won't imagine the cost of the War on terror will be in the next century. Welfare wasn't meant to replace the "Puritan work ethic" although in decline by big businesses to mass hire illegal immigrants and "workfare" of mostly black single moms in fast food joints or Wal-Marts, then lay them off if they felt could become unionized. The death of employee unions as a form of "socialism" is just a stab in workers' rights we once held truly in the anti-Communistic 1950s, after the previous war when American values fought and defeated Fascism. The welfare system in America won't be around any longer, just when we needed the most...and the previous 5 or 6 recessions since 1973 didn't wake up America enough.+ 71.102.2.206 (talk) 23:51, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

California's General Assistance "Hart Lawsuit"

Biased? I guess so, just as the California Hart Lawsuit discriminated against persons who were on GA during certain periods in 1977 and 1988. That's eleven years separating the two periods where no "underpayments" occurred. Yeah, OK.

The Hart Lawsuit of the 1990's was supposed to replenish the coffers of GA recipients who were said to have received sub-standard GA grants, they were awarded amounts of money that was said to have been shorted from their GA payments. There were certain years cited for underpayments; two small time periods were omitted from the suit.

Who did the math? Were those two time periods (1977 and 1988) specifically perfect? No underpayments at all in those years? Were the social workers who were employed then far superior to those in the other years, they made no horrendous mistakes? Or was there some other reason(s) that those two years were left out?

The Hart Lawsuit caught a lot of publicity a decade or so ago, now it's harder to find. And you sure don't find it here, do you?

Why is that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.245.120.255 (talk) 05:03, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Merger proposal

This should be mereged with Social Welfare Provision since 'welfare' is an american term which is culture-specific and not common to all English users. Social welfare provision, however, is a suitable over-arching title beneath which local systems may be described. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Toxteth o'grady (talk • contribs) 13:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC) macktheknife (talk) 15:40, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, what term is common to all English users? 'Welfare' is common enough that it was used in the article by R. M. Blank (2001) "Welfare Programs, Economics of," International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, pp. 16426-16432 Abstract. The term 'welfare state' came into common use from the British in 1941 and was quickly associated with the Beveridge Report in 1942 ("welfare state," The New Palgrave (1987), v. 4, p. 895). --Thomasmeeks (talk) 01:16, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

For further discussion, see Talk:Social welfare provision#Merger proposal. --Thomasmeeks (talk) 18:28, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

As I have previously mentioned, I think there is sufficient distinction between the cultural contexts of welfare systems - indeed even the word welfare - in different countries, to support discussing these in separate articles according to their cultural context. I could even see creating a "WikiProject Welfare" to work on articles such as Welfare state, Social welfare provision, Welfare reform, Welfare (financial aid), Welfare in the United States, Welfare in Europe, Welfare in the Nordic countries, etc. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 21:36, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, above there are 3 non-U.S. sources on the linguistic uses of "welfare." I cannot see that there is much connection of the preceding with the heading of this section title (except possibly against 'welfare' in any merged article title, a different matter from merger as such). --Thomasmeeks (talk) 18:40, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• The concept of "welfare" as financial and other aid to people in need exists in all countries and cultures, so there should definitely be a general article dealing with that concept even if there "is sufficient distinction between the cultural contexts of welfare systems...in different countries to support discussing these in separate articles".
• The term "welfare" is used in the sense of aid to people in need (and other senses) in all English-speaking countries as a look in any US or UK or other English dictionary or encyclopedia will demonstrate.[1] A look in texts from reliable sources such as this and this also proves that "welfare" is definitely not only a US English term that is culture-specific and not common to all English users. "Social welfare provision" is not the most common term even in UK English and is much less used than just "welfare" even in texts that use it.
• Both the articles Welfare (financial aid) and Social welfare provision pretend as if the other didn't exist, don't even have links to each other, and duplicate a lot of material. --Espoo (talk) 08:34, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
• These articles need to be merged and a separate sub-article spun off to deal with Welfare in the US specifically. Kaldari (talk) 16:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I did not clearly indicate this, but I agree that we could certainly merge these into an article about welfare generally, and have it link to related articles (Welfare in USA, Welfare in Nordic Countries, etc.). Good work below too, Espoo. I just think rather saying "anything done to promote..." I would say "any social program designed to promote...", but good work overall. Sorry I haven't been more active on these articles. I have been tied up with heraldry articles and the centrifugal force controversy. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 23:14, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

New article Welfare (aid)

Proposed beginning of new article:

Welfare is anything done to promote the basic well-being of people in need, especially when they have personal or social problems. This usually consists of efforts especially by government and institutions to improve the financial situation of individuals in need but also includes efforts to improve their employment chances and may include efforts to improve many other aspects of their lives including sometimes their mental health. In many countries, most such aid is provided by family members, relatives, and the local community and is only theoretically available from government sources.

In American English, welfare is often also used to refer only to government financial aid provided to very poor or unemployed people, which is called benefit(s) in British English.

In a more general sense, welfare also means the well-being of individuals or a group, in other words their health, happiness, safety, prosperity, and fortunes.

The above is essentially a summary of the sources mentioned above and ensures a global and correct presentation of the general concept.--Espoo (talk) 09:03, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Why does Cash aid and most other welfare programs, seem to favor families more than single people?

??? Punkymonkey987 (talk) 21:12, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

The answer is truely obvious, families headed by one parent (usually an unemployed single mother) or more than 3 or 4 children under age 16 are more favored to be on welfare rolls than a single adult without children nor a marital partner/spouse. Single adults are viewed as more financially strapped nowadays, but in this economy more married couples (Childless or with children) feel the pinch of the worst economic downturn in 80 years. The 2008/2009 recession has made more Americans realize the importance of social welfare programs to assist the unemployed, the retired and financially challenged families. The credit crunch, failed banks, bad mortgage home loans, rising costs of living and welfare program cuts add on the burden for over 100 million more Americans expected to join the 30-40 million legally poor.

The USA has changed from the 1960's: economics, population and government policies are radically different. A shift of people to the far-flung suburbs, white-collar jobs are limited or harder to obtain in urban areas, the dying small-town agricultural base and a deindustrialized minimum-wage-based economy from outsourcing to countries where textiles or other "manual labor" jobs are cheap. Also our population is more older and dependent on Social Security expected to dry up soon, and a low-income non-white majority of 500 million is expected in the next 20-30 years. The US government moved farther left than it has since the early 70's, but the majority are center-right or opposed the social welfare upgrade they actually need more than ever. + 71.102.2.206 (talk) 23:44, 19 June 2009 (UTC)