The recommended amount of support from welfare she receives is determined by how much she makes and if she is unwed. But because of this fact, she is more likely to have less expenses and more money in her pocket to spend. She will have fewer expenses than a married woman with a job paying $70,000, and only a slightly lower living standard. (Pethokoukis) This has become a controversy for the struggling middle class. Not all of those eligible for federal or state support exploit this system, but many do.
Less people would have to depend on welfare and other community services to get by. Many people depend on welfare because the current minimum wage is not enough to satisfy their basic needs. So, an increase would help more people help themselves. An increase would benefit all workers because it would push wages up for all employees. An employer would not be able to hire an unskilled employee for the same amount of a skilled employee, who has been employed longer.
Increased minimum wage for teens without a high school diploma was responsible for over 114,000 fewer employed teens (Even, 2010, p. A15). III. Dependency on the welfare system increases due to the increase demand for more skilled workers. A. Mothers on welfare in states that raised their minimum wage remained on welfare 44 percent longer than mothers on welfare in states where it was not raised (Garfield, 1996).
Like many Americans, she struggles to make ends meet, but Pattie feels like she is falling even further behind. With her current wages, getting to the point where she could scrape by paycheck-to-paycheck would be an improvement. Every day she wonders, do I have enough money for gas? Will my car hold up just a little bit longer before I have to pay for repairs? Pattie − and 15 million workers just like her − deserve a raise.” I agree she does deserve a raise, but one thing to remember is she gets that raise the other 15 million workers want one and more.
That means the other 88 percent of beneficiaries “include a wide cross section of families with children, couples, and others” (Furman, 2012, p. 1). The value of the minimum wage adjusted to inflation is also about 20 percent less than it was when Ronald Reagan first became president in 1981 (Furman, 2012). Currently, 19 million people are working for less than $10.10 an hour, while nearly 50 million are living below the poverty line (Furman, 2012). The minimum wage isn’t properly adjusted to inflation, therefore putting much more of a financial burden on minimum-wage working citizens. With rent averaging roughly $1,230 a month, you wonder how people could possibly live working for the current federal minimum wage (Glink,
“The United States ranks poorly relative to other industrialized nations in health care despite having the best health care providers and the best medical infrastructure of any industrialized nation” (Battista). This is due to the detrimental loop of increasing healthcare and less coverage. With less coverage, health rankings decrease as more people ill people go uncovered; “Americans have the highest healthcare cost… but do not have the healthiest outcomes” (Reeve). With a universal healthcare system, every citizen would have access to healthcare and the rankings would significantly improve. Currently the United States ranks 21st in life expectancy for men (20th for women) down from 1st in 1945 (Battista).
It has declined dramatically for women college graduates, whereas less-educated women have experienced virtually stable divorce rates” (Lamanna & Riedmann, 2011, 402). “Another reason is that better-educated and better-off working couples have had the economic tide in their favor. According to public policy professor Andrew Cherlin, “Families with two earners with good jobs have seen an improvement in their standard of living, which leads to less tension at home and lower probability of divorce,” so long as the wife does not earn more than her husband. This is particularly true in white marriages, where the greater a woman’s income, compared to her husband’s, destabilizes the marriage” (Lamanna & Riedmann, 2011, 405). Divorce rates in the past 20 years have been declining the majority of that decline has been attributed to both men and women waiting longer to marry at a more advanced and mature age.
Sabrina Tavernise from the New York Times says, “as a result, there is a growing generation gap, with younger Americans far less likely than older ones to have a family member who served.” (Tavernise) Americans are excessively self-satisfied, and think the government will always take care of their needs. Obviously not all Americans are like this, yet an excessively high rate are. Individuals need to figure out how to provide for themselves. I don't accept that everybody ought to be thrown into battle (just on a volunteer premise), however everybody should be required to go to basic training and serve for a year. It would definitely lower wrongdoing, expand development, make individuals more astute, fit, and more thankful.
The minimum wage that welfare reform was expecting people to live off of was in fact not enough to even support the buying of food. In Working poor, working hard Katherine Newman expounds on the fact that welfare benefits are cut off at low levels and unavailable to those that earn minimum wage and work a forty-hour week. Newman also states that only a “combination of the two income streams [welfare and a job] make it possible to manage…life.” (Newman) These two sources only emphasize the already established fact that welfare reform must be reformed
Making the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. Although many Americans fall under the ill-defined middle class section, they consider themselves lower class because of what they have compared to the people around them rather than what they have standalone. Some people argue that taking government aid such as food stamps and earned income tax credit will help incomes rise throughout all classes. If the upper classes income is rising without government aid, why should lower classes have to seek support elsewhere? The trade does not seem fair to people making a significantly less amount of many than needed to live a stable and comfortable life.