Blogocentric Formulations

Work Requirements for Public Assistance?

"JAFBG"  | Prompt ▼

Should people who receive state benefits be forced to volunteer for charity? Why or why not?

One of the most backwards-thinking and harmful concepts we've ever come up with as a society is that someone's worth is inherently tied to their productivity, and that basic human needs such as food, housing, etc. need to be earned. No, people who receive state benefits shouldn't be forced to volunteer for charity, FFS.

While there is certainly a conversation to be had around setting appropriate guardrails and systems by which society can address abuses of public assistance programs, that is not the same thing as a work requirement in order to qualify for those benefits in the first place. The people who rely on public assistance are not a monolith. There are people who can't work for any of a number of reasons, including but not limited to disability, lack of skills, lack of opportunity, and existing socioeconomic biases. Are we really going to say someone, "Hey, because you're unable to work for a local charity, you don't deserve to eat? To have a roof over your head? To seek medical treatment?"

Human dignity shouldn't have a cost attached to it.

It's also important to keep the bigger picture in mind, and to weigh the scope of a solution against its unintended consequences. Take all these dumb "election integrity" laws (a.k.a. voter suppression) making the rounds in state legislatures these days. How widespread is the problem of election fraud, and what is the cost of eliminating it entirely? Let's look at some data from the State of Texas:

Since 2004, Texas has issued 534 election-related criminal charges (which in and of itself is misleading because at least one individual was responsible for 100+ of those charges because they tampered with the ballots of disabled senior citizens on a large scale). Even if you count all 534 charges over the past 18 years, that's still less than 30 charges per year, in as state where an election typically has between 5 and 15 million votes counted. That means election fraud only applies to somewhere between 0.0002% and 0.0006% of the ballots. And yet the new voting restriction laws in Texas just resulted in 23,000 ballots (about 17% of those received) being rejected from the latest primary, which means that these measures are combating a one-in-five-thousand problem by invalidating the otherwise legitimate votes of one-in-five citizens.

The solution is creating more of a problem (albeit a different one) than the original problem ever was. Some might argue that's the whole point, but that's a topic for another blog post.

But consider a work requirement for public benefits in the same context. Let's say we're very concerned about the number of people who receive state benefits that are, at best, kicking back and living on free assistance. Or, at worst, are actually scamming the system. So we decide that we're going to make everybody who receives that assistance "work" to "earn" it. How many people would be kicked off those assistance programs because of their inability to work? And aren't those the people that, by definition, need the assistance the most? How many people would we be hurting to ensure the handful of bad actors didn't get away with their fraud?

Don't get me wrong, the system shouldn't be wide open and allowed to go unchecked. There should be a mechanism for evaluating cases and determining fraudulent behavior and other abuses of the public trust. But the onus of that should be on the state, not the individuals receiving the assistance.

If you're worried about too many freeloaders on public assistance programs, vote to raise taxes and allocate more to the enforcement of those programs rather than putting heavier burdens on those who rely on the programs.

If you're worried about voter integrity, vote for candidates who advocate more resources for and improvements to the election systems rather than those who look for ways to simply make it harder for people to actually vote.

If you hate abortion, vote for a better social safety net so that expectant mothers have a range of options (adoption through a well-functioning foster system, being a stay at home mom with public assistance, being a working mom with access to affordable childcare, etc.) so that abortion is no longer the only viable alternative to supporting and caring for a child - often alone and with little support - for the next eighteen years.

No one should be forced to work in order to meet their basic survival needs, and the idea of requiring people to volunteer for a charity in exchange for the assistance they need to survive is a misguided concept that will create more problems than it solves.