Would lowering welfare rates get people off the street and into the workforce?
Answer:
theoretically and practically, yes it would.
in theory, as the opportunity costs of not working(IE, leisure) goes up, more are encouraged to work as it becomes more costly not to work. the OC of not working can be raised by either 1) higher wages, or 2) forfeiting of welfare schemes.
in practice, look at Asian countries without welfare schemes, such as Singapore, south Korea and Hong Kong. they are doing as well as, if not better than, most of their counterparts in the west.
Most evidence points to yes. For example, Europe which has a much higher unemployment rate than the US also has much higher levels of welfare for those out of work.
However, tighter restrictions on who qualifies for different types of welfare to prevent abuse of the welfare systems would probably work just as well without lowering the level of welfare provided.
I am reasonably sure that you would have to be somewhat mentally ill to choose to sit on your asss all day and do nothing. Where I live, one cannot hardly even get by on welfare alone. The average 2 bedroom apartment rents for about $1300 a month. Assuming two adults and two children on welfare in that non-subsidized place, they would almost have nothing left to live on. The waiting list for subsidized housing here is over two years long.
In short, cutting the dollar amount that one receives while 'on the dole' is not the answer. While there is no single answer, education in general is a good starting point. However, there will always be those among us that are not employable for one reason or another.
Communal education and work camps for those that are able bodied would I believe be a good thing. Of course, this will never happen because of the obvious parallels to a totalitarian government.
I however, in most aspects, do not support communism...
Very simply, Economics is partly but primarily a study of incentives.
Theoretically reducing the incentive to stay out of work and thus making the relative incentive of employment greater, will result in a shift of those in voluntary unemployment into work.
However this is a very theoretical argument. The reality is that only a very minor group of people are voluntarily unemployed and many of them are wealthy enough to not claim state benefits. Thus a reduction in welfare rates would result in a very small increase in emplyoment and a much larger influence on the size of poverty and inequality.
Ultimately though, as with most of welfare economics, the topic is based largely upon individual opinions and values.
First of all, I disagree with you an excluding single mothers. Provide day care for the children and make them work. They are not helpless. Making the fathers of the children pay their share would take a lot of the financial burden from the rest of the taxpayers. Make it harder to qualify for welfare. There are too many abled bodied people on welfare.
The answers post by the user, for information only, FunQA.com does not guarantee the right.
More Questions and Answers: