They're coming for the poor. They're coming for the sick, the elderly and the disabled. It's stealing their basic safety net. First, they'd gather up accrued benefit rights, apply for commercial credit, dip into savings, or, if necessary, send wives and children to work or take out new loans on property. If still more aid was needed, they'd turn to members of the extended family, then to friends, for loans and gifts.
Easy welfare creates perverse incentives, divorcing people from the consequences of their actions.
In New Jersey, welfare reform produced a dramatic decline in teen pregnancy without a corresponding increase in abortion. This tracks the results of a 1985 Los Angeles Times poll that asked whether welfare induces welfare recipients to have more children in order to receive more money. JWR contributor Larry Elder is the author of the newly released, The Ten Things You Can't Say in America . Let him know what you think of his column by clicking here.