Welfare (Part III)

If the welfare program is not reformed to only pay those that are helping themselves or their community, it should still be changed to be incentive-based. The first incentive in order to receive a welfare check should include passing a urine analysis test. This is aimed at stopping welfare checks from supporting a person’s drug or alcohol addiction. Other incentive based ideas are to only provide a welfare check to those families that have both parents raising their children. Statistics indicate children raised with two parents are more likely to succeed than those being raised by single parents. Today, mothers or grandmothers are raising many African-American children. The chance of an African-American child to succeed is much less likely today than back in the sixties or seventies, when black family values were enforced. The same thing can be said about Caucasian and Hispanic families. This policy is to provide an incentive to keep families together. Welfare should not be provided to children born out of wedlock. This policy is intended to provide incentive to slow teen and other unwanted pregnancies. However, the latter policy may force teens to have an abortion, and that would not be an ideal situation either. The goal is to provide incentives to force minorities and the poor to be more responsible to help themselves, their families, and communities to succeed. Statistics indicate that part of the reason for the increase in the fertility rate to two point one in 2006 was because teen and single mother pregnancies have increased as has babies born in poverty. This only illustrates this is still a problem in our country, and it needs to be addressed. These statistics also showed the birth rate to be much higher for minorities. Hispanics had fertility rates of three while African-Americans had fertility rates of two point one, which is ten percent higher than whites. Fertility rates are considerably lower for educated females and females with career opportunities. When removing white females with Evangelical or Mormon ties out of the fertility rate statistics, minority women have considerably higher birth rates than whites. These statistics only reinforce the theory of mediocrity at work. More children are being born in poverty, which means the growing division between the rich and poor will only get larger. It also means that the trend of entitlement and social program funding will continue to grow to be a larger portion of our government’s fiscal budget.

My aunt is a principal in an entirely black grade school in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana area. She has been trying for years to change the mindset of young minority women who do poorly in school. They do not think they need to be able to read or write, or do simple math because when they grow up, they are going to collect welfare and raise kids, just like their mothers. This is no fault to these children because they do not know any better. This is what their environment teaches them on how to live their life. This is what they think is a normal life. It is sad, but we have ourselves to blame for it because our government is enabling not only minorities, but also any poverty-stricken person to think this way. Teenagers who have babies are eligible for welfare. How is this policy incentive to not have children? Welfare is probably the major cause of why we have so many illegal immigrants in this country. Welfare teaches people to become lazy. Why take a low paying, hard labor job if the poor can get money for doing nothing? The poor are becoming lazy, and it opens up many jobs for illegal immigrants to fill.

My Book: Is America Dying? (Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com)