Interesting New York Times Article concerning Entitlements

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THIS is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability.

Many people in hillside mobile homes here are poor and desperate, and a $698 monthly check per child from the Supplemental Security Income program goes a long way — and those checks continue until the child turns 18.

“The kids get taken out of the program because the parents are going to lose the check,” said Billie Oaks, who runs a literacy program here in Breathitt County, a poor part of Kentucky. “It’s heartbreaking.”

This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.

Some young people here don’t join the military (a traditional escape route for poor, rural Americans) because it’s easier to rely on food stamps and disability payments.

Antipoverty programs also discourage marriage: In a means-tested program like S.S.I., a woman raising a child may receive a bigger check if she refrains from marrying that hard-working guy she likes. Yet marriage is one of the best forces to blunt poverty. In married couple households only one child in 10 grows up in poverty, while almost half do in single-mother households.

Most wrenching of all are the parents who think it’s best if a child stays illiterate, because then the family may be able to claim a disability check each month.

“One of the ways you get on this program is having problems in school,” notes Richard V. Burkhauser, a Cornell University economist who co-wrote a book last year about these disability programs. “If you do better in school, you threaten the income of the parents. It’s a terrible incentive.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opini ... ef=opinion

Glad some liberals are finally waking up to the fact welfare programs can actually hurt people that they are intended to help.

What is the alternative then. Do we let them starve? How about jobs? What about all those conservative "job creators" who don't want to pay their share in taxes because they are the "job creators" How many jobs have they created in the last 12 years in the US while complaining we shouldn't raise taxes on the wealthy because they are the "job creators"?
You have to fix the system before you take away entitlements.
Liberals don't want entitlements, they want opportunities to be self sufficient. It is sad when the only possible way to survive is to collect entitlements.

How many jobs are people supposed to create when they are over taxed, over regulated and when there is virtually no savings to encourage production.

They've been under taxed and under regulated and they took their corporations overseas and invested overseas instead of here in the US.
Under regulation almost brought us into a depression.
They would rather see teachers, fire fighters, and postal workers get laid off then to pay taxes. How does that help job creation?

Did you not RTFA? The problem is not simply poverty but the perverse incentives that keep these people in poverty for generation after generation after generation. What needs to change is the incentive system so that there is an incentive for sending your children to literacy programs, so that there is an incentive for getting married, so that the military is seen as a route higher education and out of poverty (and if you ask any of your grandparents and great-grandparents that are still living, the military was not a bad option). I have no problem supporting someone who is truly disabled and paying taxes for it. I however had a problem with supporting people whom with proper supports and education, can be gainfully employed. However, that will never happen with incentives such as these.

It is not savings that encourage production. Nor is it lowered taxes or lessened regulations. It is the potential for profit that encourages production. Granted, lower taxes and less regulaton does increase potential profits in the short term. But this is unsustainable over the long term.

There is, however, another way. Which is to focus on building a strong consumer base. Consumers, not business, are the cornerstone of a truly strong and sustainable economy.

Every single time, without fail, that we loosen regulation on corporations, every time we take a "market directed" approach toward dealing with the economy, we have a short period of false prosperity that ends in disaster. The roaring 20s that ended in the great depression. The 80s that ended in what was, until now, the greatest recession since the great depression. The (almost a) decade leading up to the current recession. What was the one thing all these periods had in common? Massive deregulation of business.

Good article. I see poverty in an urban context all the time. It's interesting to read about the rural version.

If you have kids, read to them and make sure they stay in school. It seems just so obvious to me. When I was little we had no money but I always had my library card in my pocket and walked a mile and a half to get there, read, and walked a mile and a half to get home.

IMHO that is worth so much more than $650/month or whatever the equivalent was at that time. I think I wore the same clothes every day until one of the other school moms gave me a paper bag that had a few clothes in it. But that implies that a community looks after one another rather than relying on a gov't handout.

so tighten up on the abuse. don't end the programs. most folks on these programs legitimately need them.

I would think government support would not be considered the only option - - if there were other means of making a living in Appalachia than joining the military!
Seriously, who wants their only alternative to be risking your life?
I am sick and tired of hearing conservatives apologize for big business with excuses of too much taxes, or too many regulations. How about taking a little risk by opening job opportunities in poor areas like Appalachia? It hardly compares to the risks poor people take when they join the military, and fight for their country.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

People do what they have to do to survive, and generally respond to incentives.

Perhaps the best solution would be Milton Friedman's negative income tax. People could receive the same amount of money, and live in Appalachia, but without pretending to be ret*d.

See to it that everyone who can works for his bread. If some jobs have to be created, then create real one. The streets, the parks and the playgrounds need cleaning.

No one will starve. Everyone will work, one way or another except the few true disability cases. They will be supported too.

If everyone who can works, then people will stop believing in The Free Lunch. There is no such thing.

ruveyn

Bring back the W.P.A, then?

Without the kick backs and the corruption. Also the CCC while you are at it.

In the New Order, no one will lean on his shovel. There will be quotas. People who miss the quota, miss the next meal.

Back in ancient times Moses said to the Israelite. Load up your camel and mount up your asses. We are gong to the Promised Land.

During the New Deal FDR said to the workers. Light up your Camels and sit on your asses -- this IS the promised land.

ruveyn

Don't mind if I do.

But, I think that part of the idea was to give people money and keep them off the streets.

It's not like they are escaping slavery, and going off to massacre everyone on their way to some Promised Land.

No, it's an indictment of right wing conservative poverty trap means testing racket for any help combined with ultra-low wages in the name of the Holy Job Creators... thanks to the Right, the effective marginal tax rate for the working poor is astronomical. Any money they make is immediately negated meaning they gain nothing. The Right believe in poverty wage jobs because profits are more important and the workers are just peons who are getting what they deserve. They claim in fact that unemployment is created by people being paid too much... in fact, they support a massive reserve army of labour to keep those wages down. What kind of opportunities do they have in Appalachia anyway? They do have the largest supplies of the USA's preeminent energy resource but do the people there get any of that? No, of course not. So many people over there end up in the military because there are no other alternatives.

Yes I am sure that is the reason a lot of young people don't want to join the military... Or maybe some don't fancy the idea of getting blown up or shot. Also, considering you have to have a disability to get on disability what makes anyone think the military would accept people on disability?

Without even reading the article I can tell its just more 'poor/disabled people' are a burden propaganda designed to divide the public...by blowing abuse of the system out of proportion trying to make it look as though the majority of poor people are just taking advantage of help they don't even need just because it's 'easy'? or rather because some people have the misconception that its super easy to apply for and actually be approved for things like disability.