MetaFilter posts tagged with Welfare

Barbara Ehrenreich on Poverty in America

ocherdraco — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:50:05 -0800

Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, has for the past two months been writing a series of opinion essays in the New York Times that discuss poverty, both new and entrenched. The pieces, so far, are "Too Poor to Make the News," "A Homespun Safety Net," and "Is It Now A Crime to Be Poor?" "Too Poor to Make the News"

In some accounts, the recession is even described as the “great leveler”.... But the outlook is not so cozy when we look at the effects of the recession on a group generally omitted from all the vivid narratives of downward mobility — the already poor.

"A Homespun Safety Net"

So far, despite some temporary expansions of food stamps and unemployment benefits by the Obama administration, the recession has done for the government safety net pretty much what Hurricane Katrina did for the Federal Emergency Management Agency: it’s demonstrated that you can be clinging to your roof with the water rising, and no one may come to helicopter you out.

"Is It Now A Crime to Be Poor?"

In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with ticketing and arrests for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking, littering or carrying an open container of alcohol.

Brave New Welfare

Pope Guilty — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:54:14 -0800

"Lies about surgical sterility requirements. Questions about their sex lives. Outright threats. Here's what faces families in Georgia when their luck runs out."

Paging Mr. Dickens...

dejah420 — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:39:18 -0800

When welfare benefits the rich, and starves the poor: Despite soaring unemployment and the worst economic crisis in decades, 18 states cut their welfare rolls last year, and nationally the number of people receiving cash assistance remained at or near the lowest in more than 40 years. The American tradition of guaranteeing cash assistance to the poor came to an end with the signing of legislation in August 1996. Since then, states get block grants, and state and local governments decide how to spend the money. For example; fewer than 2,500 Georgia adults now receive benefits, down from 28,000 in 2004—a 90 percent decline. Louisiana, Texas, and Illinois have each dropped 80 percent of adult recipients since January 2001. Nationally, the number of recipients fell more than 40 percent between then and June 2008, the most recent month for which data are available. In Georgia last year, only 18 percent of children living below 50 percent of the poverty line—that is, on less than $733 a month for a family of three—were receiving aid. States are spending the TANF block grants to plug budget holes[PDF], fund property tax rebates, [google book excerpt] and other discretionary spending. Because there is no federal oversight anymore, it's become a real challenge to find out where all the money goes, once it leaves the feds hands. One thing is for sure though...it sure doesn't seem to be getting to the poor.

Can We Cure the Health Care Crisis?

kliuless — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:43:26 -0800

Search for an Rx - We asked Johns Hopkins administrators, physicians, and researchers about the health of a system Americans rely on to keep them healthy. Afterall, an ounce of prevention...

Can we improve quality while driving costs down? As contradictory as the notion might seem, there is a precedent for doing better work at a lower cost. "The thing that is so hard for people to understand, but that was proven in the auto industry, is that when you focus on cutting costs, you automatically reduce quality. But when you focus on increasing quality, as we've done with safety measures here at Hopkins, you almost always reduce cost. It's counterintuitive," Brody says.

and in addition to finance (and the auto industry) it's probably also applicable to education as well...

Polygamy pays (in more ways than one).

gman — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:57:08 -0800

It's been going on in Britain for a while. Now hundreds of men in Toronto are receiving welfare for each wife. Is this what Rowan Williams has in mind?

Cuba: an accidental revolution

elpapacito — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:21:59 -0800

Cuba: The Accidental Revolution. Hasta la revolucion ? Maybe, but some revolution is dictated more by need than by politics. In this documentary, we are shown how Cuba is converting from oil-subsidized agricolture to organic agricolture with remarkable results. The presence of a police state isn't conveniently forgotten, as much as the facts that public education, public healthcare and limited, regulated free enterprise markets are helping Cubans in the transition from the illusion of freedom in a subsidized economy to a far less comfortable and rich, but more sustainable and independant economy.

The Twilight Years

hadjiboy — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:35:10 -0800

Indian Government proposes bill to penalize children for neglecting their aged parents.

Excuse me sir, might I have some poridge?

hadjiboy — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 20:07:22 -0800

Children for Hire.

She can't put her jeans on safely

alloneword — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 04:35:26 -0800

Multiple orgasms trap benefit cheat is one Times headline that I wish I had written myself. The story is so far as I can tell quite true; The Daily Mail has it too, under a much duller headline. On the other hand, it does have readers grumbling at the end: "The more benefit cheats they find - the better. I have two slipped discs, have to sleep sitting up and am entitled to, yes, you've guessed - nothing." writes one, as if Ms Byron were being subsidised for her orgasms.

By Their Bootstraps

y2karl — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 08:54:40 -0800

Consider the scorecard. During Clinton's two terms, the median income for American families increased by a solid 15% after inflation, according to Census Bureau figures. But it rose even faster for African Americans (33%) and Hispanics (24%) than it did for whites (14%). The growth was so widely shared that from 1993 through 1999, families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution saw their incomes increase faster than those in the top 5%. By comparison, under President Reagan in the 1980s, those in the top 5% increased their income more than five times faster than the bottom 20%. Likewise, the poverty rate under Clinton fell 25%, the biggest eight-year decline since the 1960s. It fell even faster for particularly vulnerable groups like blacks, Hispanics and children. Again the contrast with Reagan is striking. During Reagan's two terms, the number of Americans in poverty fell by just 77,000. During Clinton's two terms, the number of Americans in poverty plummeted by 8.1 million. The number of children in poverty fell by 50,000 under Reagan. Under Clinton the number was 4.1 million. That's a ratio of 80 to 1. Clinton's Biggest Gains Not on Conservative Critics' Radar

Confessions of a Welfare Queen

ZenMasterThis — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 12:36:14 -0800

Confessions of a Welfare Queen. How rich bastards like John Stossel rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars. By John Stossel.

Misconceptions about the Welfare State in the U.K.

314/ — Mon, 30 Dec 2002 12:30:10 -0800

Poverty and the Welfare State: Dispelling the myths This working paper (PDF file) states that "debates on poverty and welfare in Britain are full of myths." Among them (culled from the exec summary, since I'm still reading the paper): 1. The belief that poverty is long term and is passed from generation to generation is not consistent with the evidence. 2. Poverty is not caused by people behaving differently (although people act differently after they become poor), or by people having too many children, or by racial differences. 3. Scare stories about spiraling costs and abuse are greatly exaggerated. 4. Welfare does not encourage dependency. Just in case anybody's writing a major paper over the holidays or anything. I found this via the fantastic Canadian Social Research Links web site. (And if this came up in a previous post, I apologize; I searched on just about every relevant term I could think of.)

nofundy — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 08:28:43 -0800

Corporate Welfare and Social Welfare. Which is the most egregious? A bill in Congress to address welfare got comments from GWB during a political fund raiser in SC. Does this statement make any sense to you? "In the way they're kind of writing it right now out of the Senate Finance Committee, some people could spend their entire five years on welfare - there's a five-year work requirement - going to college. Now, that's not my view of helping people become independent, and it's certainly not my view of understanding the importance of work and helping people achieve the dignity necessary so they can live a free life, free from government control." -GWB- I always thought education WAS the key to escaping poverty but the "education President" obviously disagrees. I'd really appreciate your comments on the bill and this article.

onegoodmove — Sun, 27 Jan 2002 22:35:13 -0800

Bush wants $100M to urge welfare moms to marry What will he want next $100M to urge Atheists to become Christians.

msacheson — Mon, 18 Jun 2001 14:28:44 -0800

MOVE! Get out of our county! Get off our welfare rolls! Here, take this money and get out.

Tulare County, California, pays unemployed to move elsewhere, anywhere, and people love it. One woman says the grass is greener in Arkansas, of all places.

Sounds like a win-win, eh? (NYT link)

Sean Meade — Tue, 08 May 2001 12:13:14 -0800

An exchange between James Fallows and Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

[L]et me explain that your book is the account of three month-long episodes of attempting to live entirely on earnings from $7- or $8-per-hour jobs. You show up in low-wage cities and try to get on your feet, like someone "graduating" from welfare to work. One of many intriguing aspects is the juggling of three challenges: landing a job (not that hard, in the "tight" economy of the late nineties); doing the job (sometimes quite hard, as you make vivid); and finding a place to live (nearly impossible, for reasons we will get to).

The material questions are 1) Do we care? 2) What should we do about it? The author makes a couple of suggestion a couple of links into the article. What do you think?

link via adam