One extra hot and steamy afternoon, the neighbor’s cat visited my back yard. Small but sinewy, she threw herself as high into the air as she could, batting her front paws at a butterfly. Two bounding steps later she went skyward again.
She never touched the butterfly but enjoyed the exuberance shared only among the young – who never follow the news.
While President Donald Trump shredded diplomacy in Europe, back home his administration declared victory in the War on Poverty.
To celebrate, they decreed that the poor had to be more tightly controlled, starved of benefits and damned to work in low-paying jobs. [ https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/us/politics/white-house-war-on-poverty-work-requirements.html ].
As one prominent analyst said, “it’s all part of a carefully calculated strategy to reinforce myths about the people these programs help, to smear these programs with the dog-whistle of welfare, in order to make them easier to cut. [Rebecca Vallas, Center for American Progress]
Yes, it does get worse…
We discuss three reasons for expanding work requirements in non-cash
welfare programs as a means of solving the problem…the large number
of non-disabled working-age recipients on non-cash welfare programs
who work few, if any, hours. First, self-sufficiency has been declining
in recent decades while material hardship has fallen, motivating
a renewed focus on building self-sufficiency via work requirements.
Second, an alternative solution of increasing positive incentives for
work (for example, by increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit)
could exacerbate already-high implicit taxes on low-skill part-time
workers. Third, evidence suggests that welfare programs that
require work in return for benefits increase adult employment
and may improve children’s outcomes.
So, making work pay – through the Earned Income Tax Credit – is wrong because??? Kids do better when their parents are always away from home working dead-end, low-paying jobs?
Facts convinced me a long time ago that must work programs exist to force struggling folk to work for lousy employers paying crappy wages.
Here in Missouri, for example, the Work Activities Program in Temporary Assistance virtually never has a single person – anywhere in the state – enrolled in On The Job Training, despite the fact that those in the know swear on the Bible, Torah and Koran that OJT remains the gold standard for success. Likewise, most months, fewer than 50 people are in state-supported Education Related To Employment. [ https://dss.mo.gov/re/pdf/fsd_mhdmr/1805-family-support-mohealthnet-report.pdf see page 15, second page of Table 5] .
While I haven’t been able to launch a scientific survey of Temporary Assistance adults, the reports I receive from food pantries indicate that most people get referred to hospital janitorial and food service departments, state jobs (such as in Department of Mental Health facilities), and, commercial cleaning companies.
Yes, having employment income is better than being unemployed, yet, the jobs people get forced into don’t lead to self-sufficiency: they damn families to perpetual poverty and dependence.
The Trump Doctrine of “work more for fewer benefits or else” is just plain mean.
Around the country good programs have moved lower-skill people from benefit programs into almost middle class level jobs. To do that requires a concerted, professional investment in case managers, job developers, and, education and training. Indeed, current USDA rules require that when states employ must work programs that they must provide job-related training, transportation and child care and other supportive services. When that happens folks have a fighting chance at success.
By the way, that New York Times article ran on page A14 of the New York edition. Even the national
paper of record didn’t give the report much play.
And, in the Great Irony category, the report claims that research shows the War on Poverty was won in
2013…Doesn’t that mean Barrack Obama gets to lead the victory parade?
Submitted by Glenn Koenen, WCD Member