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Wouldn’t the best welfare system be in which all received just enough to survive -small apartment, just enough food to survive and basic medical care for free, unless they got a job which is able to pay for more than that?
(the benefits would include for family.)There would be no problem of people not working, as they wouldn’t want to live a life without even the smallest luxury.
please don’t attack me, you can only refute what I wrote.
@Doing my best
I think that’s the way the welfare system works now, in theory. But “the devil is in the details”.Do you view government welfare as the equivalent to the Jewish concept of tzedaka, including its obligations for the non-poor and its entitlements to the poor?
No one would get jobs
Doing, the best system would be a workfare” program where they are trained for productive work.
Some places have tried that concept. It’s called Universal Guaranteed Income. The results were not positive. You can google the details.
The problem is both cost, and a the “backwards bending supply curve” issue. The later is is based on observations that increased wages bring out more workers, but at a certain point many people start preferring the same income and more leisure time. Observe that among certain groups (our’s in particular), once an individual has a minimal level of income, they decide to work less and do something else (in our case learning in Torah, in the case of the goyim, things such as sports or watching videos). If the standard was that of what was the poverty line a few centuries ago (enough low quality food to avoid starvation, minimal medical care, a warm dry place to sleep but with no privacy, enough clothes to be non-naked, etc., it might work, but what would that accomplish. Thus we have “welfare” (and tsadakkah) focused on individual needs rather than a blanket grant.
I theoretically agree with Avi K, but I don’t think there would be enough jobs to go around. If they hire 10 guys to mow a lawn that could be mowed by just one, they probably end up spending more than they would by just giving away the money for free.
I agree w op. Entitlements shouldnt be luxurious, rather only necessities. I have three children in a room, while Section 8 will give another bedroom so that there are only two children in a room!
Of course this should include workfare…The Romans tried that over 2000 years ago. didn’t work then either. recently, Finland, a small homogeneous country where some thing like that should have the best chance of working, tried it too. the dropped it like a hot rock after two years.
Many of us believe that the biggest chilul hashem we confront as a tzibur is the continuing culture of welfare dependency in certain communities where there is a sense of entitlement to reliance on welfare payments to subsidize a lifestyle of large families where the husband is osensibly a full time learner and the wife perhaps earns a marginal income part time while also caring for a large family. This was NEVER the yiddeshe model in the alte heim but somehow is rationalized here that as long as the laws allow such welfare claims, we should grab every available dolloar because the goyim do (ans whereas they just sit around doing drugs, our welfare families are engaged in heilege limud torah etc. so that makes its “ok”). In the alte heim, there were a small number of full time learners but the large percentage of men had a parnassah and managed to conduct a balance life of limud torah and support their families. Changing this culture over the long-term should be a subject of debate. Again, this is an issue only for certain families as evident by the welfare dependency data broken down by zip code and more granular census tract reports from the NYS government.
This was NEVER the yiddeshe model in the alte heim…
They also didn’t eat tofu chulent in the alte heim, but that doesn’t seem to bother you.
ghadora clearly has no objections with welfare dependency by certain minority groups, who he does not demand to be forced off of government entitlement programs.
Neville, if the minimum wage were replaced by a negative income tax, as Milton Friedman suggested, there would be more jobs. Deregulation, lowering business taxes, etc. would also go a long way.
Joseph, they are not doing a chillul Hashem. Chazal presume that a normal person is ashamed to take charity and call it “bread of shame”. So I guess these people disagree with Chazal.
To Meno: Chazal bring down that the references in Shemos (16: 1-36) to מָן or mān were really describing Tofui which dor hamidbar saved each week to make chulent for shabbos, a tradition revived in the Alte Heim (aka norther California) .
Hey Joe…..
I have the same objections to long-term reliance by “certain” minority groups (codewords for those you frequently condemn) on welfare and actually DO support the Trumpkopf’s efforts to impose WORK obligations for able-bodied recipients of food stamps, medicare, etc. However, I also feel that yidden should aim for a higher standard that those minority groups and find it obscene to read about the too frequent episodes of fraudulent activity among some mosdos to actually inflate the rolls of those eligible for welfare.
A G’mar tov from those on your left (which presumably covers a large percentage of CR participants).
…find it obscene to read about the too frequent episodes of fraudulent activity among some mosdos to actually inflate the rolls of those eligible for welfare…
Wait, are we talking about receiving welfare or committing fraud? Those aren’t the same thing.
For individuals for whom being unemployed is not an option (e.g. disabled), a negative income tax is a much more humane way of supporting them. For many individuals who could work, a negative income wold create a strong disincentive to seeking paying jobs. While some individuals would chose to do something constructive knowing they could do so without starvation (the proverbial “starving” artist, the kollel person, etc.), many people would choose to goof off and engage in activities such as consuming abusable substances or watching videos, etc.
One should also note that the United States today has a serious labor shortage (especially if the USA tries to restrict Hispanic and other migration and expel illegal aliens), and a negative income tax discourage people from joining the work force.
Akuperma, a negative income tax only applies to people who work but have low incomes. The best solution for disabled people is to enable them to work around their disabilities. For example, a person who is homebound could telework. This is, in fact, becoming generally accepted as it saves companies expensive office space and saves employees commuting time (and very often aggravation).
The negative income tax concept has been proposed in the USA (in the mid-20th century) as a replacement for public assistance. It would replace a variety of welfare programs such as general assistance, SSI, WIC, Section 8 housing, Food stamps (SNAP), and perhaps medicaid. The flaw is that any level of aid that is enough to survive on will mean that many people will choose to live off the “entitlement” and not seek employment. This is easily observed among frum Jews, many of whom lose interest in increased parnassah once they have enough to survive and spend their time on Torah and Mitsvos (unfortunately, many non-Jews when reaching that same level of income are more likely to devote their time to less constructive activities).
If the goal is to make employment more lucrative for the poor, it would be better to eliminate the payroll tax (however the payroll tax is largely dedicated to paying social security, so that’s a problem) and to increase the zero bracket amount of the income tax (something Trump did).
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