News article - "welfare state"

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'Welfare State' Doesn't Adequately Describe How Much America's Poor Control Your Wallet - Forbes

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Certainly some things to think about but the main problem I have with the article is that it lists statistics (many of which are obvious) and assumes cause and effect without sufficient evidence. For example,

Along with this collapse of work, the War on Poverty was also associated with the breakup of lower income families, and soaring out-of-wedlock births.

There is no discussion of any other factors that may have contributed to this condition. It simply assumes it must be caused by social welfare.

Non-work and having children outside of marriage are the two main causes of poverty in America today.

This is a rather obvious statement (no job = poorer) but they gloss over how social programs are mainly responsible for this.

If poor women who give birth outside of marriage were married to the fathers of their children, two-thirds would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

Once again, it is obvious that a two parent family is more economically viable than a one parent family, still they fail to relate this to social programs. It also implies that economics are the only factor in whether people should be married and presumes that people must be married in order to get any of the economic benefits.

Indeed, poverty in America is negligible among those who do only three things – finish high school, upon graduation take whatever job is available and keep working, and get married before having children.

No one honestly believes dropping out of school, not working, and having kids are paths to financial success. They may choose that path for many different reasons but thinking it is the road to riches is not one of them.

After a few paragraphs of trying to convince us that Republicans care about poor people (could have done without the politicking), the writer finally gets to some suggestions for moving forward:

The key to the 1996 reforms was that the new block grants to each state were finite, not matching, so the federal funding did not vary with the amount the state spent. If a state’s new program cost more, the state had to pay the extra costs itself. If the program cost less, the state could keep the savings.

I think this is worth considering and he actually provides some evidence that it may have worked to some extent. However I worry that allowing the states to keep any extra block money is an incentive to provide less service for those who need it. I would like to hear a more robust discussion of this option before accepting or refuting it.

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