I personally feel like I don't read enough on occurring problems in the United States, I tend to over hear the news or just hear some people randomly debate something that is going on but I never really sit down and read about things that in the long run can affect everyone living in this country, so I want to be able to be well informed on the matters of welfare debates and most importantly unemployment because over these past few weeks that I have been educating my self more and more about this subject I come to realize that 90% of the problem (in my eyes) is that people need jobs! if our economy could create good paying jobs for people maybe they wouldn't need to be on welfare to support their family. Although if you think even more outside the box I also realized that education is KEY to having a successful life, and that is another on going struggle for many Americans living in the U.S.
but anyway I came across this article in opposing view points where the author claims that ..

Globalization Increases U.S. Unemployment

"International trade agreements are not designed to benefit the United States, its people, its workers, or its future."





In the following viewpoint, Darren Weeks claims that America's pro-globalization policies are responsible for widespread unemployment in America. According to Weeks, economic treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement are a means for U.S. businesses to outsource jobs to nations where labor is cheap while laying off millions of better-paid Americans. He insists that globalization has not brought jobs to the United States but has instead destroyed U.S. manufacturing and lowered the standard of living of all working Americans. Weeks is the host of the "Govern America" talk and news show on the Republic Broadcasting Network, a radio and Internet operation.

 

 

MONEY its always about the money right? It seems that although the U.S. government creates programs such as Welfare, Unemployment, TANF (temporary assistance for needy families) and many more, they are also concerned with ways in which they can save money. Like I mentioned before and like this author is implying maybe the government should give people food stamps and an unemployment check but rather use up ALL those resourced to make more jobs !! its like that saying that says "give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man how to fish and he will eat for a life time" I'm sure that the U.S government have a reason as to why they want to increase globalization but maybe they can just decrease many of the problems occurring in this country if they keep their industries in America.!!

Many can argue that if things are American built that they will increase the cost of living but imagine all the jobs that an American manufacturing can create perhaps the cost of living will go up but the minimum wage can also increase.  (Again I am the least informed and educated person to comment on these political points but these comments are coming from a person living in the U.S.)

 

http://0-ic.galegroup.com.skyline.ucdenver.edu/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=OVIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&display-query=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&limiter=&u=uofcden&currPage=&disableHighlighting=false&displayGroups=&sortBy=&source=&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&action=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010746206

 

Today I asked my self if some of the benefits that the government is offering are actually helping people out or are they just acting as incentives to make people want to be involved in the welfare system...

WILL EXTENDING UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS GIVE INCENTIVES TO PROLONG UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS ?





I found this article where the authors actually believe that extending unemployment help will only make people want to stay unemployed rather than find a job...
"Increasing benefits can serve an important humanitar-ian aim among needy groups. However, there are those among the unemployed for whom such benefits can pro-vide reduced incentives towards seeking immediate em-ployment. Among these recipients, some may respond by not seeking employment at all. As shown above, investi-gators have sought to determine whether the number of those who become more selective is significant"

"As noted by many writers, increases in unemployment benefits can provide reduced incentives for the jobless to seek jobs. The job seeker may increase his overall qual-ity standards in demanding a new job, the Match-Quality Hypothesis. The seeker can, and does, become more se-lective. This, in turn, increases the duration of unem-ployment for those receiving benefits and, all other things given, increases the level of unemployment among those as well. Surprisingly, only one person with the MQH trait is needed to produce a slight bulge in unem-ployment duration, and hence in total unemployment. Available empirical studies provide evidence consistent with these predictions. In addition, these behavioral traits appear to be empirically valid regardless of the culture of the work force. "
This makes sense because if you think about it if they benefits keep raising the amount that is given to the unemployed, there aren't going to be many jobs out there that they are qualified for that will give them the same amount of money. Thus increasing the time of their unemployment because they become some what picky and demanding of where they want to work. and we shouldn't blame these people, its only logical to want to stay unemployed if this is paying more than any of the jobs that you can actually get hired at.

http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=8698

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21607810-new-figures-show-speed-which-americas-economy-can-grow-without-stoking-inflation-has

Following up on my previous post I wanted to find more information on the employment status that America has up to date and I found a fairly recent article....

"Recent data have prompted a reappraisal. Not only has unemployment fallen rapidly, broader measures of underemployment which include the unemployed who have given up looking for work have fallen even further. Yet participation has not risen. Meanwhile, employers are having more trouble filling jobs: in May 3.2% of all jobs went vacant, close to a seven-year high, suggesting the jobless lack the skills that employers are looking for.

AMERICAN workers have had no news this good for years. In June employers added 288,000 jobs, bringing the total for the year to 1.4m, the best six-month stretch since 2006. Unemployment has sunk to 6.1%, the lowest rate in almost six years. It could hit levels long regarded as “full employment” within a year. Help-wanted signs are proliferating, with vacancies up by 20% since January."





This post from "The Economist" posted on July of 2014 states some statistics that imply that there are jobs out there but maybe not for people with no education. And as I mentioned before, maybe some of the resources that the government are using for welfare participants can be used in training for jobs that are actually booming in the market. Some jobs only need a few months to a year in training, and most of the welfare participants receive aid for the same amount of time, why wouldn't it be a good idea to require welfare participants and MOSTLY UNEMPLOYMENT RECIPIENNTS to go through a course that helps them get a job.

Today I was watching a show based on a fictional story called "House of Cards" its becoming a really popular show about American politics and everything that comes a long with being the president of the Unites States of America.

http://house-of-cards.wikia.com/wiki/America_Works
The character that plays the President in this show created a job opportunity campaign called "America Works." Which basically promises jobs to everyone and anyone that wants to work and is capable of working. "The ultimate aim of the legislation is to create full employment across the United States, with Underwood desiring its scope to be as wide as that of the New Deal. It plans on reducing entitlements from both Social Security and welfare, instead focusing on putting Americans into full time work." This made me think about the issues that people have with the welfare system and I asked my self...

WHY ISN'T THERE ENOUGH JOBS FOR EVERYONE IN THE REAL WORLD?
Because one of the arguments that people in the welfare system or that are in unemployment is that they can find a decent job.
I found this article published on Time that explains why unemployment reached its highest percentage in 2009 since 1983...
"This is hardly news, of course. For months economists have been talking about a jobless recovery. And they point to certain factors as having contributed to the problem — from the severity of the recent recession to the so-called skills gap, a shortage of workers with the training needed to fill the jobs that are available. These factors do help explain why job losses were so bad in the first place and why the unemployment rate reached 10% in 2009, the highest level since 1983. But they don’t explain why job creation continues to be so weak."

"To get back to the level of employment before the recession — replacing the jobs that were lost and also keeping up with natural growth in the workforce — would require more than 300,000 new jobs a month through 2016. In April, by contrast, there were only 115,000. And economists question whether the current U.S. economy is able to create even 150,000 jobs a month, on average — or half the number required."
WOW!! that is some big numbers to get the job market back to how it was before the recession. 

"Much of the reduction in the unemployment rate over the past two years has come from so-called discouraged workers — people who have given up on finding a job or left the workforce for other reasons. And it’s often noted that if the percentage of the population over age 16 who are working or looking for work were the same today as at the end of the recession, the unemployment rate would be in double digits."
One of the reasons that this article mentions that is affecting the job opportunity is that since the last recession the population growth has increased a lot and the above quote says that if all the people that are actually able to work would want to work, the unemployment rate would be even worse. 
So .. Welfare programs and governmental aid to the public is necessary but maybe there could be ways in which the government can use some of the money and resources used on welfare to create jobs for America just like in the fictional show House of Cards.

http://business.time.com/2012/05/07/why-arent-there-more-jobs/

I found this article while I was still searching how much money taxpayers contribute to welfare and it was refreashing to me that not everyone is trying to abolish the help to the "truly" needy!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/12/no-we-dont-spend-1-trillion-on-welfare-each-year/

THE WASHINGTON POST: "NO, WE DON'T SPEND $1 TRILLION ON WELFARE EACH YEAR" 

On the contrary to many opposing arguments that are trying to make welfare system look bad this article describes how conservatives try to manipulate they way they share information to make it seem worse than it actually is ....

The claim about $1 trillion on “welfare” is more interesting and complicated. It shows up in this recent report from the Cato Institute, which argues that the federal government spends $668 billion dollars per year on 126 different welfare programs (spending by the state and local governments push that figure up to $1 trillion per year).

Welfare has traditionally meant some form of “outdoor relief,” or cash, or cash-like compensation, that is given to the poor without them having to enter an institution. As the historian Michael Katz has documented, the battle over outdoor relief, has been a long one throughout our country’s history.

However, this claims says any money mostly spent on the poor is “welfare.” To give you a better sense here, the federal spending breaks down into a couple of broad categories. Only about one-third of it is actually what we think of as “welfare”:

1) Cash and cash-like programs: As Michael Linden of Center for American Progress told me, there are five big programs in the Cato list that are most analogous to what people think of as “welfare”: The refundable part of the Earned Income Tax Credit ($55 billion), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ($21 billion), Supplemental Security Income ($43.7 billion), food stamps ($75 billion), and housing vouchers ($18 billion) and the Child Tax Credit. All together, that’s around $212 billion dollars."

2) Health care: This is actually the biggest item on Cato’s list. Medicaid spends $228 billion on the non-elderly population, and children’s health insurance plan takes up another $13.5 billion. This is also roughly a third as well.

3) Opportunity-related programs: These are programs that are broadly related to opportunities, mostly in education or job-training. So you have things like Title 1 grants ($14 billion) and Head Start ($7.1 billion) in this category. But as Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Donna Pavetti notes, these programs don’t all go to poor people. For instance, Title I benefits school districts with a large share of poor children, however that money will help non-poor students attending those schools.

4) Targeted and community programs: What remains are programs designed to provide certain services to poor communities, which make up the bulk of the number of programs. Adoption assistance ($2.5 billion) and low income taxpayer clinics ($9.9 million) are two examples here.

So what should we take away from this?

--The federal government spends just $212 billion per year on what we could reasonably call “welfare.” (Even then, the poor have to enter the institution of waged labor to get the earned income tax credit.) And there have been numerous studies showing that these programs, especially things like food stamps, are both very efficient and effective at reducing poverty. They just don’t show up in the official poverty statistics, because that’s how the poverty statistics are designed.

"The government's only source of money is taxes. This is why all government welfare is immoral, unethical, and unconstitutional, it is just the forced redistributing wealth from a person that earned it, to a person that did not. Theft is defined as the forced redistribution of wealth, it is a crime in every human culture. But for some reason people keep electing politicians that promise to commit this crime....it boggles the mind."

This quote has no academic source and is written by a person who made a comment on a YouTube video that was talking about how drug testing welfare participants has turned out to be a waste of money. The link to that video is : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Red4FsBiQI4
But these words by this American who seems to be against welfare made me think:

HOW MUCH DO TAX PAYERS ACTUALLY CONTRIBUTE TO WELFARE?
At first I wanted to find information that contradicted this persons thought because I actually believe in helping the needy, and no matter what taxes are never going to go away, so regardless if our tax money goes to welfare or the government uses it for something else, we will be taxed until the day we die... but the issue I guess with this individual and the issue that I can understand and agree with , is are we contributing some of our tax money to people that are well capable of working but dont ?

I found an article that explained a couple of things that I was very well miss informed of...


http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1676
"Each year, approximately 143 million federal income tax returns are filed in the United States. Of these, about 58 million have no tax liability after taking deductions and credits, leaving roughly 85 million people to shoulder the nation's entire federal income tax burden. It is these 85 million people who fund the $746 billion federal portion of the nation's total welfare spending. On average, each of them spends $8,776 to keep federal welfare programs afloat. 

As of January 2009, only four of the 80+ federal welfare programs in existence had work requirements for their recipients; the Obama Administration subsequently suspended those requirements in two of the four programs. Most notable was its elimination of the provision in the 1996 welfare reform legislation (known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act) requiring that after three months on food stamps, able-bodied adult recipients with no children must become engaged in some kind of work activity for a minimum of 20 hours per week in order to remain eligible for assistance. The termination of this requirement caused the number of healthy, childless food-stamp beneficiaries to double, from 1.9 million to 3.9 million. All told, the total number of food stamp recipients nationwide reached 46.7 million by 2012—up from about 32 million in 2008."

This is it, I think that this is the only problem that people want to change about welfare, the fact that even single childless individuals who are not handicapped are not required to work when receiving food stamps

SO WHAT WERE OBAMAS INTENTIONS OR IDEAS BEHIND GOING AGAINST THE 1996 WELFARE REFORM?

 While searching "Opposing view points" I found an article written by a girl name "Ranee" which caught my eye because our names are the same except mine is spelled "Renee".
She has a pretty harsh story on how she personally experienced neglect from her mother who has been collecting unemployment and not using it the way it should be.
"Ranee is a writer and contributor to Helium. In the following viewpoint, she expresses her strong support for mandatory drug testing of welfare recipients. Ranee argues that welfare should be reserved for emergency situations, not for drug addicts. She uses her own mother as a cautionary tale of a person who has abused both drugs and the welfare system, which she maintains has encouraged her mother's habits and has motivated others to engage in the same behavior."
Before you read the article there are a three questions that you are advised to think about while you read the information:

• What option does the author believe a welfare recipient should have if he or she fails the drug test due to a prescribed drug?
• How does Ranee respond to Bill Piper's point that drug testing is an invasion of privacy?
• How does Ranee state that her mother abused the welfare system?

"The same should apply to government testing as the workforce testing. If someone has to give a drug test for government assistance and fails due to a prescribed controlled drug, that doesn't mean that they won't receive assistance or that they will lose it. They simply have to prove that the drug is prescribed to them by a physician."
She mentions something that I have come across with in many of the campaigns against drug testing welfare participants and that is that many people are afraid of losing their governmental assistance if they come out positive because of prescribed drugs, but doesn't it seem logical that if they are truly prescribed drugs then they can easily prove this with a doctors prescription. No one can expect that you welfare be taken away if you medically are in need of certain prescription drugs and to be against drug testing welfare participants because of this seems irrational and making up excuses.

"Bill Piper [Director of National Affairs of the Drug Policy Alliance] tries to debate the subject with Mike Bennett [US Senator from Colorado] on Fox News. Piper states that it is an invasion of privacy and would be humiliating for someone to have to admit that they are on Viagra or anti depressants. Honestly, if I were a man that lost my job and home and could not afford to feed my family, I would be more embarrassed to be on welfare than to reveal a certain prescription I'm on to the "stranger" giving me a drug test. If your kids are starving, that should NOT matter or even cross your mind! Bill Piper believes that drug testing recipients on welfare would be "too expensive" and risky for kids whose parents won't return to the DHS [Department of Human Services] office for extended funding due the fear of a drug test."
She makes a great point that the TRUELY needy wont care about anything that they have to do if they need to feed their families or live another day. I think that people keep forgetting that governmental help is a BENEFIT not a luxury and its not something that people in a low income family are entitled to its something that should be taken care of

"That's a good thing right? Wouldn't that encourage people to get clean to at least renew their food stamps? Piper believes that instead of testing we should just "expand access to treatment" (because you know an addict on welfare can't afford to go to rehab.) This guy is ridiculous. Welfare rehab? Is he being serious? That would cause taxes to go sky hi! "
This is giving people too much of a break or freedom to do what ever they want. If we want to build America upward we need to establish policies and governmental help that give people the incentive to work and better their life's.

"I'm not downing the welfare system; I just believe that it should be reserved for emergency situations, like people losing their jobs because of the economy and the disabled. It shouldn't go to people like my mother who lack the incompetence to keep a job due to drug use"
This is the statements from Ranee that truly caught my eye and mind. Like she said its not about saying that welfare should be terminated or that helping the needy is wrong but this help since it is getting so hard to get with so many budget cuts should be available to those who truly need it because they were laid off not because they have a problem with drugs or alcohol.

and finally to put the cherry on top...
"Weren't the Bill of Rights created to protect the rights of citizens ... so Piper is basically saying "you have the right to abuse drugs, and turn down a drug test because you have something to hide". Come on! it's just as easy as getting a physical in junior high to play a school sport, no one wants to get the physical because they're weird, but all the kids want to play ball. In the end the physical was for their own good. I know we can only control so much but it's our honest hard earned money, don't we have a RIGHT to know that it's going to a good cause?"

http://0-ic.galegroup.com.skyline.ucdenver.edu/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=OVIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&display-query=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&limiter=&u=uofcden&currPage=&disableHighlighting=true&displayGroups=&sortBy=&source=&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&action=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010238286