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[YouTube] The Truth About Welfare: Past, Present and Future


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MP3 Download: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/3049/the-truth-about-welfare-past-present-and-future

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared an “unconditional war on poverty in America” - not simply to “relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” How has that worked out? Today there are over 126 Federal antipoverty programs and in constant dollars, Federal spending has risen from $107 billion to $688 billion – or 640%.

Total government spending has ballooned to $21,000 for every person below the poverty level in America, or $63,339 for a family of three. Since the war on poverty began, $19 trillion dollars have been spent ending poverty, but the poverty rate has increased. What is the Truth About Welfare?

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Sources
http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa761_2.pdf
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PovertyinAmerica.html
https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/historical/families.html
https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/historical/hstpov24.xls
http://www.economicsjunkie.com/is-government-needed-to-fight-poverty/
http://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/modeling-potential-income-and-welfare-assistance-benefits-in-illinois/
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/entitlement-america-head-household-making-minimum-wage-has-more-disposable-income-family-mak
http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/sipp/publications/tables/hsehld-char.html
http://www.census.gov/sipp/tables/quarterly-est/household-char/2012/4-qtr/Table2.xlsx
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/354-percent-109631000-welfare
http://www.bls.gov/cew/apps/data_views/data_views.htm#tab=Tables

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Yes, sounds completely familliar. In my case here in NL i get a complete sloped cut in health/rent tax returns ("benefits") between 15k and 22k euros per year (non tax deducted!). I'm actually considering working considerably less to stay below the 15k level. And then find something that pays 'cash only' or 'btc only'... Govs just create nothing but stupid incentives.

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I think there may be a basic problem with the comparison of the efficiency of government welfare programmes and private charities.

The cited source claims "multiple sources" for the surprising claim that "70% of government welfare funds go to bureaucrats". These sources in turn ultimately seem to be based on a single source "Breaking the Poverty Cycle : Private Sector Alternatives to the Welfare State" by Robert L. Woodson (1989) that is not widely available but that seems to have been referring to the shift away from benefits that had been largely in cash in the early days of the US welfare programmes to a situation in which 70% of the benefits were provided in kind, for example payments made directly to landlords and doctors.

So the 70% figure doesn't seem to have been an estimate of the admin overhead, but because Woodson referred to the money as going "to government bureaucrats and others who help the poor", what he said was largely misunderstood in the multiple layers of retelling to refer to admin overhead alone. For more detail, see for example this article in the Washington Post and this discussion.

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