Welfare

Firstly I have a few rebuttals to make. I include them in the first round (with the exception of the third rebuttal) because they lead up to, later arguments, or stand alone as arguments. The latter case applies especially to the first second and 3 Rebuttal 1: My opponent states in the second sentence of their argument that welfare isn’t helping anyone. This point is made from a stance that the people who are on welfare, could just go to work and get off it if they so chose. I’ll say more about that later, but right now I would just like to point out the obvious fallacy here. Clearly my opponent has not seen the studies on the distribution of welfare, because if she had, she would know that “91 percent of the benefit dollars from entitlement and other mandatory programs went to the elderly (people 65 and over), the seriously disabled, and members of working households” [1. ] Nearly all of the people on welfare either can’t work or are already in working households, and truly are being helped by it. This doesn’t even get to cases like single mothers. Rebuttal 2: For the “taxpayers picking up the tab for a flawed system,” to be a valid argument, I think it is fairly clear that you have to prove that the system is flawed, which my first rebuttal and later points will address. Additionally, welfare is only 11% of government spending; taxpayers pay more for government pensions (25%. ) The only reason that we are discussing the welfare spending is that it has been extensively demonized by the right wing media [2. ] Rebuttal 3: money shouldn’t be going to churches because of separation of church and state, and the percent of GDP being spent on welfare is currently decreasing. Money isn’t being taken away from schools and parks by welfare, but by things that are on the rise such as defense spending. Rebuttal 4: Many people on welfare who are able-bodied are working part time or looking for work. In fact only 27 % of women on welfare were idle. “The rest, nearly three-fourths, combined welfare with low earnings (20 percent), worked some of the time and were on welfare between jobs (23 percent), worked limited hours and looked for work (7 percent), or looked for work the entire time they received welfare (23 percent). ” [3] Rebuttal 5: Children of parents on welfare are not encouraged to stay on it, given that most of those who are able-bodied and on welfare (as your source so rightly mentions) get off it. As empirical evidence, welfare spending is going down, but if children were to be incentivized this way you would see a cascade effect resulting in greater and greater numbers of people on welfare. Clearly this isn’t the case because “The 2011 survey [of the number of people on welfare] had 5.8 million. For 2013, we found 3.7 million [people on welfare]. ” [1] As a last comment (before I start my own case) your numbers of the amount of people on welfare are completely skewed. The census (where these numbers come from) double counts, including all members of households in which one person receives welfare. Additionally other types of benefits are included in the census study. Welfare recipients make up only 1.1% of the population, and the numbers of people on benefits are lower than you state as well. [4] Now I will present my own arguments. Contention 1: Welfare helps those who can’t work. Welfare is essential for the elderly and disabled. It would be extremely cruel to propose that we discontinue a program that helps those who can’t help themselves. As a civilized society, one measure of our merit must naturally be how we help our week, and care for our old. Furthermore, abolishing welfare would make poverty worse (I’ll state more reasons for this later,) because those who are elderly and disabled who are on welfare would now have to be supported by their families, increasing the strain on them. In many cases, these families are also impoverished (otherwise they wouldn’t have relatives in need of welfare,) and could not support their relatives; many would become homeless and many would suffer greatly. This is a massive impact because elderly and disabled persons who are at a far greater risk of death due to exposure etc. resulting from homelessness. If my opponent wishes to talk about those on subsidized housing and food stamps (which are not directly under the TANF welfare system,) the problem clearly becomes far worse. Contention 2: The problem isn’t that people are lazy; there just aren’t enough jobs to go around. My opponent claims that welfare allows for people to be lazy, however, as one of my rebuttals stated, this is simply not the case. Most people who can work that are on welfare look for work. If they are looking for work, one must ask what the real problem is. The problem is a lack of job vacancies. One example comes from Milwaukee; “Job vacancy surveys in the Milwaukee metropolitan area have found that even with an unemployment rate in the 4-5 percent range, there are three to five persons needing work for every available job. ” [3] To put that in perspective, in the last year, unemployment in America has wavered between 6.1 and 7.5 percent. People who are on welfare and are able-bodied aren’t lazy; it is literally impossible for all of them to have jobs. [5] Contention 3: People on welfare find it difficult to get jobs. Even most entry-level jobs require job experience and education. For those who had to drop out to help their impoverished families or stayed in high school instead of looking for work to aid their families have one or other of two problems. Either they don’t have the education or the work experience to apply for most jobs. Probably the most blatant example of this is a study done at McDonald's. The study, conducted in 1993, found that 14 people had applied for every job opening. The 13 out of 14 of them that were rejected found it immensely difficult to find work; so much so that 73% of them didn’t have work a full year after initial research was conducted. Additionally, young applicants had the most difficulty, because most people needed extensive experience to get a job at McDonald's. [6] To help the impoverished, disabled and elderly, and to sustain those who are unable to or find it difficult to acquire a job, lets keep and reinforce a system that brought us out of two depressions. Removing welfare would be cruel, rash and would put more stress on an already broken country. Instead of fighting welfare, lets look to the real causes of problems in America. Thank you, I look forward to your rebuttal. [1] . http://www.cbpp.org... [2] . http://www.usgovernmentspending.com... [3] . http://www.njfac.org... [4] . http://www.statisticbrain.com... [5] . http://data.bls.gov... [6] Katherine S. Newman and Chauncy Lennon, Finding Work in the Inner City; How Hard is it Now? How Hard Will it be for AFDC Recipients? (New York, Columbia University, 1995. (via the 3rd source)