{"id":32809,"date":"2012-09-27T10:59:18","date_gmt":"2012-09-27T15:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?p=32809"},"modified":"2012-09-23T14:42:48","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T19:42:48","slug":"americans-and-dependency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2012\/09\/27\/americans-and-dependency\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans and Dependency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

From Matthew Spalding<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Do you think benefits ought to entail working for them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that\u00a049% of the population\u00a0<\/a>lives in a household where at least one person gets some type of government benefit. The Heritage Foundation\u2019s annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks government spending and creates a weighted score adjusted for inflation of federal programs that contribute to dependency. It reports that in 2010,\u00a067.3 million Americans<\/a>\u00a0received either\u00a0Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,<\/a>\u00a0Social Security, support for higher education or other assistance once considered to be the responsibility of individuals, families, neighborhoods, churches, and other civil society institutions \u2014 an\u00a08% increase<\/a>\u00a0from the year before.<\/p>\n

These people aren\u2019t necessarily dependent on government; many could live (even live well) without their Social Security check, Pell grant or crop subsidy. That\u2019s not the point. The problem is that Washington is building a culture of dependency, with ever-more people relying on an ever-growing federal government to give them cash or benefits.<\/p>\n

This is a growing and dangerous trend. The United States thrives because of a culture of opportunity that encourages work and disdains relying on handouts. The growth of the welfare state, a confusing alphabet soup of programs that are supposed to help low-income Americans make ends meet and do not include entitlements such as Social Security or Medicare, is turning us into a land where many expect, and see no stigma attached to, drawing regular financial support from the federal government\u2026.<\/p>\n

Yet when poverty expert Robert Rector, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation,\u00a0examined these anti-poverty programs,<\/a>\u00a0he found that only two, the earned income tax credit and the additional child refundable credit, require recipients to actually work for their benefits.<\/p>\n

Under a culture of dependency, poverty becomes a trap, and recipients get stuck. Long-term welfare recipients lose work habits and job skills and miss out on the marketplace contacts that lead to job opportunities. That\u2019s a key reason the government should require welfare recipients to work as much as they can. What could be called \u201cworkfare\u201d thus tends to increase long-term earnings among potential recipients.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Matthew Spalding: Do you think benefits ought to entail working for them? Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that\u00a049% of the population\u00a0lives in a household where at least one person gets some type of government benefit. The Heritage Foundation\u2019s annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks government spending and creates a weighted score […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1732],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public-issues"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericans and Dependency<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From Matthew Spalding: Do you think benefits ought to entail working for them? 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