Welfare's Limits
I have lost count of the number of welfare-reform proposals under consideration by Congress or being urged on it by one expert group or another. What sticks in my mind, aside from the fact that virtually all of them have some provision for "workfare," is that none of them can work.</br></br>I don't suggest that there is no reason why particular "reformers" might not prefer one proposal to the others, or even that requiring some work in exchange for a welfare check (provided there is adequate day-care, health insurance, protection against coerced drudgery, etc., etc.) is bad.</br></br>When I say that none of the proposals can work, I have in mind the one thing that all the reformers would like to accomplish: a system that gives money to those families that desperately need it while encouraging the able-bodied to work.</br></br>The dilemma is familiar enough. Make the welfare grant large enough to permit a family to live in decency and you make it foolish for potential grantees to take low-paying jobs. Make it small enough to render bottom-of-the-barrel jobs attractive, and you guarantee that the jobless will live in squalor. Subsidize the lowest-paid jobs and you have to subsidize the jobs at the next higher level; how can you pay the assistant janitor and the janitor the same salary?</br></br>How do you get out of that conundrum? The short answer is: You can't. No amount of tinkering with welfare rules will solve the fundamental dilemma. If you are comparing the current welfare grant with wages from the currently available bottom-rung job, the grant (taking into account automatic eligibility for free medical care) will either be big enough to make the job seem a bad bargain or too small to afford a decent existence for those unable to land even a bad job.