[quote=eavesdropper]None of these programs permits “laziness” in its eligibility guidelines. The real issue is that it’s both difficult, and politically risky, to measure laziness, so it becomes a non-issue in the administration of these programs.
There is a genuine need for these programs. But they were not designed to be permanent income providers for citizens of the United States. And, despite the “rules”, it’s readily apparent that, for a great number of people, they’ve become just that.[/quote]
Eavesdropper: Like all issues related to race in the United States, the problems with social programs are well documented, but the solutions are political suicide. No one wants to speak of the destruction of the black family in America, nor do they want to talk about illegitimate births, the plummeting HS graduation and literacy rates, black-on-black violence, etc.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan had some excellent ideas on this subject: Moynihan was an Assistant Secretary of Labor for policy in the Kennedy Administration and in the early part of the Lyndon Johnson Administration. In that capacity, he did not have operational responsibilities, allowing him to devote all of his time to trying to formulate national policy for what would become the War on Poverty. He had a small staff including Paul Barton, Ellen Broderick, and Ralph Nader (who at 29 years of age, hitchhiked to Washington, D.C. and got a job working for Moynihan in 1963).
They took inspiration from the book Slavery written by Stanley Elkins. Elkins essentially contended that slavery had made black Americans dependent on the dominant society, and that that dependence still existed a century later. This supported the concept that government must go beyond simply ensuring that members of minority races have the same rights as everyone else, and offer minority members benefits which others did not get, on the grounds that those benefits were necessary to counteract the lingering effects of past injustices.
Moynihan’s research of Labor Department data demonstrated that even as fewer people were unemployed, more people were joining the welfare rolls. These recipients were families with children but only one parent (almost invariably the mother). The laws at that time permitted such families to receive welfare payments in certain parts of the United States.
Moynihan issued his research under the title The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, now commonly known as The Moynihan Report. Moynihan’s report[2] fueled a debate over the proper course for government to take with regard to the economic underclass, especially blacks. Critics on the left attacked it as “blaming the victim”,[3] a slogan coined by psychologist William Ryan.[4] Some suggested that Moynihan was propagating the views of racists[5] because much of the press coverage of the report focused on the discussion of children being born out of wedlock. Despite Moynihan’s warnings, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program included rules for payments only if the “Man [was] out of the house.” Critics said that the nation was paying poor women to throw their husbands out of the house. Moynihan supported Richard Nixon’s idea of a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI). Daniel Patrick Moynihan had significant discussions concerning a Basic Income Guarantee with Russell B. Long and Louis O. Kelso.
After the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress, Moynihan agreed that correction was needed for a welfare system that possibly encouraged women to raise their children without fathers: “The Republicans are saying we have a helluva problem, and we do.”
Moynihan’s approach was race-neutral, unlike the eventual approach of the U.S. Government in creating the welfare state and we can now what we’ve wrought in terms of these various programs and policies.
