Welfare in the United States is in need of dire reform. Though all Americans pay into welfare, most do not have any benefit to show for it. Some welfare recipients abuse the system. Still others fall into a cycle of unemployment, spurred by their lack of job training.
The government ought to condition welfare on mandatory community service. The community service would take multiple forms, and the particular program a person is put into would depend on his past experience or preferences to some extent.
Liberal democracies have a duty to the people. Everything that the government does is inevitably funded by the people. One of the cornerstones of democratic governance is the effective use of taxpayer money.
There are two fundamental ways to make sure that welfare spending is effective. First, welfare must be more effective as a temporary program designed to help people in between jobs, not in place of jobs. Second, the welfare system needs to be revamped to provide a greater social benefit.
Conservatives frequently criticize entitlement programs, like welfare, for a variety of reasons. One of the most common criticisms is that welfare creates a free rider problem. Some people can get by living on welfare, and prefer not to work. These free riders work jobs for short times then either quit or get fired, allowing them to become eligible for welfare.
Free riders weigh down welfare by needlessly costing taxpayers money. The government needs to be more active in making sure that free riders be pushed out of the welfare system. Under the proposed plan, people will be working while on welfare. They will no longer be able to be free riders as they will have to work for the money they receive.
Welfare will stop being a way for people to stay unemployed. Instead, it will encourage people to go find other work because whether or not they are employed they will have to work for money. A free rider will likely decide that if he has to work in any case he may as well seek employment at a place that will pay him more.
When people work jobs rather than be free riders, they produce for companies. The more companies produce, the better off the company does. When companies do well, the economy does well.
Eliminating free riders also leads to less money handed out in welfare. This enables the government to either cut the deficit or spend on other important programs like education, defense and healthcare.
One of the biggest problems with people on welfare is decreased competitiveness. When on welfare, people do not gain any job experience. Naturally, this puts people who are on welfare at a competitive disadvantage in the job market. Unable to get jobs, these people will be forced to stay on welfare. The government thus spends more money here. The cycle perpetuates itself.
Under the proposed policy, people who go on welfare will be able to gain experience in cleaning cities, community outreach, organization, painting and a large number of other marketable skills. As a result, people who go on welfare will be more qualified for jobs.
In addition to increasing the likelihood that a person on welfare will get a job, there are also ancillary benefits of the proposed policy. When a person learns new skills, he becomes more enriched as a person. A welfare recipient may even discover that the type of work he is doing for welfare is something that he would like to pursue in the market. The more skills an employee has, the more productive he is. As employees are more productive, companies will increase productivity.
Cleaning up the community is helpful in itself. People will appreciate a cleaner community because it is aesthetically pleasing. They will appreciate sounder infrastructure because they constantly use roads, sidewalks and piping.
According to Broken Windows Theory, the cleaner one makes a place, the safer that place is. The logic is that people are more willing to litter and make dirty places that already look littered and dirty. The theory explains why people rarely see drug dealers in upscale parts of cities but frequently see them in more run down areas.
Rudy Giuliani applied Broken Windows Theory in New York City and made a major effort to clean up areas in the city. City officials would clean up the facades of abandoned buildings, clean graffiti off of walls and strictly enforce petty crimes like riding the subway without fare. The crime rate in New York dropped tremendously as a result.
The federal government will be able to apply the theory on a national scale. Welfare recipients will start to clean up their own communities, thereby substantially increasing city cleanliness and reducing crime. It is difficult to imagine a situation in which people would object to cleaner and safer cities at virtually no added cost.
It is time for a fundamental streamline of the welfare system in the US. This country has the ability to set the golden standard for the rest of the world in terms of the administration of welfare and community enrichment. There is no better time to start than now.
