Welfare Shouls not Be Abolished

Welfare should not be abolished because: (1) Welfare Reduces Poverty: "Studies show[3][4] that in welfare statespoverty decreases after countries adapt welfare programs. Empirical evidence suggests that taxes and transfers considerably reduce poverty in most countries whose welfare states commonly constitute at least a fifth of GDP." (Kenworthy, L. (1999). Do social-welfare policies reduce poverty? A cross-national assessment. Social Forces, 77(3), 1119-1139; Bradley, D., Huber, E., Moller, S., Nielson, F. & Stephens, J. D. (2003). Determinants of relative poverty in advanced capitalist democracies. American Sociological Review, 68(3), 22-51) After welfare programs were intoduced, the absolute poverty level droped in Sweden from %23.7 to %5.8, in the Netherlands from %22.1 to %9.3, in Denmark from %26.4 to %5.9, in Germany from %15.2 to %4.3, in Canada from %22.5 to %6.5, in France from %36.1 to %9.8, in Belguim from %26.8 to %6, in Italy from %30.7 to %14.3, and similarly in other countries including the US and the UK. http://en.wikipedia.org... (2) It Provides Basic Human Rights/Needs where they otherside would not be able to get the aid. Welfare provides a mininum level of wellbeing and support for all citizens in forms such as monetary payments, subsidies and vouchers, health services, housing, and so forth, to individuals who are unemployed, those with illness or disability, the elderly, those with dependent children, and veterans. It is easy to say "get up and get a job," but quite often people are born into situations or find themselves in situations due to no fault of theirs where they cannot obtain work such as illness due to car accidents, falls, exposure to infectuous disease or chemical agents. Economic downturns such as the Great Depression can also cause unemployment. "The Great Depression had devastating effects in virtually every country, rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25%, and in some countries rose as high as 33%." http://en.wikipedia.org... These folk were not responsible for being laid off, it wasn't their fault the economy crashed. "Approximately 54 million Americans experience some form of disability, a number likely to increase as the US population ages and with medical advances saving and prolonging lives. Increased numbers of American with disability are also occurring as a result of continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." (United States Ratification of International Human Rights Treaties, July 24, 2009, 'Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)') These people are not your average lazy dude who just don't want to work. The disabled do their best, but there is only so much they can do. They still have to pay their light, water, and buy food, clothing, shelter. Do we not "all" these basic human rights? Welfare assists those who can't otherwise earn enough to have this basic standard to living to attain it in economies where the cost of living coninues to rise. The 193 member states of the United Nations are legally bound to the charter on human rights. One of those rights is "Social Security," a form of Welfare, which supports you when you get sick, injured, or old. In the UN ad for social security, it says this may be money, medicine, or whatever you need to get back on your feet, "because sometimes, we all need a little help." Food shelter and education are also among these human rights, which indeed costs money. http://www.humanrights.com... So Aid in its simplest form is a basic income grant, a form of social security periodically providing citizens with money. In pilot projects in Namibia, where such a program pays just $13 a month, people were able to pay tuition fees, raising the proportion of children going to school by 92% while child malnutritionrates fell from 42% to 10% and economic activity grew by 10%. (A new approach to aid: How a basic income program saved a Namibian village". spiegel.de. http://www.spiegel.de.... Retrieved 2011-05-28; "Namibians line up for free cash". bbcnews.com. http://news.bbc.co.uk.... Retrieved 2011-05-28) Education and health are human rights, so we can see again how welfare aids in this regard. (3) Welfare Reduces Crime Studies have shown that the lower socioeconomic class engages in more criminal activity than those who are financially well-off. Many criminals are desperate and impecunious individuals who live in deteriorating and disorganized areas. These people lack the social support along with economic resources that are easily accessible to more affluent people within society. Many people believe that there is great influence of such social forces upon the behavior of human beings which many times leads people to behave criminally. According to social structure theories, social forces can directly cause crime. Sociologists Park, Burgess, and Wirth have all concluded that the social forces that exist within urban areas indeed create more criminal interactions . (Siegel, L. J. (2006) Criminology. 9th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth) So if poerty increases the desperation of people for food, shelter and clothing, causing them to steal or even kill, and welfare does indeed reduce poverty as I have shown, it stands to reason that welfare reduces the amount of crime there would be had there been no welfare programs. This doesn't mean that there cannot be other crime causing factors that causes the hike in crime to exceed the reduction (making it unnoticable), but without welfare, there would certainly be more crime than what we do see. I'll wait until Con presents his case before getting into the meat of this debate. Thank you.