“The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what the harshest racism couldn't do. And that is to destroy the black family.”
Walter E. Williams
“The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.”
Thomas Sowell
Using my own family as an example here: My mother made ends meet through welfare, foofstamps, drug dealing, and prostiturion. She was also a film-maker for Leftist causes, including “Our Vanishing Wilderness” which was shown on PBS. Congress enacted some environmential laws after viewing this series. She was smart, but said that she was afraid to leave public assistance because it was guarenteed, whereas a job was not guarenteed.
Long-term public assistance creates dependencies that people are reluctant to leave.
Being smart, my mother shopped the various states for the highest welfare payout. We flew to Hawaii, but found out that expenses where so high, the additional wefare paid out was not enough. She settled on California. Here the net payout was best, and combined with non-conventional housing, such as storage units or the projects in South San Francisco, one could live “comfortably.”
My Aunt decided one day her biological clock was ticking and decided to have a baby. Also “smart,” she researched public assistance programs before getting pregnant. She found a public progam in Maine she liked, got pregnant, moved to Maine, and got a new boyfriend. Interestingly, he bought a historic schoolhouse and converted it into living quarters.
Nobody like having an friend or family member mooching for too long, without contributing to the household in some way. With public assistance, this kind of peer pressure does not exist. Where a political party can leverage these social programs into political gain, we run into additional problems beyond the social aspects.
