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The Welfare Challenge
| Article
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20697 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
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9 / 1992 |
604 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
THE WORLD & I symposium this month deals with the vexing problem of welfare. Sensible people agree that the welfare system should not encourage a welfare mentality. Most would argue that welfare for able-bodied individuals should be combined with job training or actual work. Certainly people will have more pride in themselves and a sense of accomplishment if they earn what they receive.
However, good principles often fail to it obdurate cases. For instance, many individuals argue for a new Works Progress Administration (WPA) or Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). In the 1930s many of the unemployed helped to build the nation's roads. But would this not substitute low paid labor for skilled or semiskilled labor in the 1990s? One can visualize teams of welfare workers painting and repairing ghetto dwellings. This surely would be useful. But I can also foresee large teams of unemployed engaged in useless "make work" that becomes a counter productive farce. When at the end of the World War II soldiers were put to work painting the boxes, and then dumping them at sea, it produced a break down in morale and led to extensive theft.
This does not mean that the foregoing ideas are necessarily bad, but only that they must be thought through carefully. We already have many examples where normal city workers engage in featherbedding practices that frustrate any reasonable objective. One can see in some Chicago's parks five workers watching while a sixth slowly works. The city's departments are filled with people who deliberately misfile records so that nothing has to be done. If work projects are to be adopted, we must first ensure that they do not replace normal work, that they are useful, and that some efficiency standards are employed.
There is still a further requirement that perhaps is even more important. When the recession ends, there still will be unemployed who lack the skills required for even minimally skilled jobs. Many of these untrainable because of failures in our education systems or because of dysfunctional life-styles. They are the permanently unemployed. As the technological revolution continues, their numbers will increase dramatically.
If we put the welfare mothers of young children to work, we may only exacerbate that problem. These are often singe parent homes in which the absence of the single parent may only reinforce tendencies toward functional incapacitation. It is possible that these mothers should be paid to encourage their own children to learn. This will not be easy, and there
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