Fw: [BRC-NEWS] The 'Success' of Welfare Reform

[" George Snedeker" <snedeker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Ken Boettcher <thepeople@xxxxxxx>
To: <brc-news@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, December 29, 2000 6:52 PM
Subject: [BRC-NEWS] The 'Success' of Welfare Reform


> The People
>
> December 2000 (Vol. 110, No. 9)
>
> Welfare Reform No Success For Capitalism's Poorest Victims
>
> By Ken Boettcher <thepeople@xxxxxxx>
>
> When welfare rolls reached a 30-year low last year, THE
> PEOPLE reported that politicians and pundits of all stripes
> had "raised a kind of 'I told you so' cacophony...crowing
> about the 'success' of welfare reform." The din of that
> chorus has not faded since.
>
> One might assume that by "success" the politicians and
> pundits mean that the "reform" accomplished what many of
> these self-same folks said was their motivation in seeking
> it: to replace degrading dependency on the state with
> independence and self-sufficiency. A spate of recent
> studies on the effects of the 1996 welfare reform
> act makes clear the real nature of that "success."
>
> "The recent data show that while millions of former welfare
> mothers have jobs, their incomes are often lower than before
> the reforms were enacted," as an article in BUSINESS WEEK
> put it. No national studies on the effects of unceremoniously
> dumping millions of people off the welfare rolls have been
> concluded. The original law did not provide for such studies,
> even though the lives of millions of human beings, many of
> them children, were at stake. Nonetheless, ample evidence
> of the effects exists. BUSINESS WEEK recently cited some
> of that evidence.
>
> -- A study of Census Bureau data reported that "the average
> annual income of the poorest 20 percent of single mothers --
> half of whom have been on welfare at some point -- fell by 4
> percent, to $8,410, between 1995 and 1998, the latest year
> available....Because, while welfare payments for this group
> fell by $802 a year over this time period, paychecks from
> work climbed by only $244 a year."
>
> -- Five states that followed women recipients after they
> left the rolls -- Wisconsin, Michigan, South Carolina,
> Missouri and Iowa -- "reported that between 1996 and 1998
> close to half had lower incomes after their welfare checks
> stopped," according to BUSINESS WEEK.
>
> -- South Carolina and Wisconsin also reported significant
> increases in the number of single mothers reporting that
> they have periods of time when they are without money to buy
> food, that they are behind in their rent or housing payment,
> that they lack money for child care and that they could not
> pay for needed medical care.
>
> -- A new study by the Cato Institute, a conservative think
> tank, reports that "at least two-thirds of former welfare
> recipients still depend on government assistance programs
> such as Medicaid or food stamps." "Clearly, welfare reform
> is failing to make people independent," says author of the
> study Lisa E. Oliphant.
>
> -- The U.S. Conference of Mayors reports, according to
> BUSINESS WEEK, that "last year...visits to soup kitchens and
> food banks jumped by 18 percent." "That was the biggest rise
> since the last recession, in 1991."
>
> Moreover, the situation is likely to get much worse. The
> welfare reform act mandated that states dump 25 percent of
> recipients off the rolls within its first 18 months as law.
> That shift is the one that produced the effects noted above.
> The act mandates an additional 50 percent be dumped by the
> end of 2002.
>
> "Most of the mothers who have found jobs so far," BUSINESS
> WEEK wrote, "are those with more skills and less-troubled
> personal lives. Many of those remaining on the rolls have
> serious problems: physical disabilities, mental health
> issues, or abusive spouses. When these women eventually
> get pushed into the labor force, they're likely to have
> an even tougher time earning a living."
>
> If BUSINESS WEEK's suggestion that "education and training
> are key ways to help those struggling to make it after
> welfare" is any indication, a movement to "reform" the
> 1996 "reform" may be afoot before long.
>
> Workers should be wary of any such movement. Why?
>
> The evidence shows that welfare reform had little to do
> with increasing self-sufficiency and reducing the human
> degradation of dependency on the state. Rather, it was and
> is a brazen act of contempt for the working class. Like the
> 19th-century English "moralists" who attacked Britain's
> "Poor Laws" that provided a dole, the backers of today's
> welfare reform maintain that welfare breeds laziness and
> illegitimacy, and that welfare recipients are being
> tossed off the dole for their own good.
>
> If "morality" has anything to do with welfare reform,
> however, it isn't a morality that benefits working-class
> families. Rather, it reflects the immorality of a ruling
> class bent on curbing the costs of operating the political
> state with no other purpose in mind than to pocket even
> more of the wealth produced by workers.
>
> Dumping millions more workers onto a labor market that
> already has millions unemployed -- the so-called economic
> boom notwithstanding -- will produce another economic
> benefit to the capitalist class that has no doubt occurred
> to many backers of such "reform." With millions more workers
> forced into the labor market, the downward pressure on wages
> will grow.
>
> The "morality" of "welfare reform" is entirely economic in
> scope. Simply put, what benefits the capitalist class is
> moral.
>
> Socialists maintain that welfare is not worth fighting for.
> It wasn't worth fighting for even when the political state
> first implemented it. Indeed, it WASN'T fought for, at least
> not by the working class. It was GIVEN by the political state,
> in the name of capitalism, and for capitalist purposes. It
> was an effort to drive the wedge of a handout between the
> desperation of millions of impoverished workers and the
> possibility that some would begin to trace the roots of
> their economic desperation to capitalist ownership and
> control of the economy. In short, it was a hedge against
> the growth of class consciousness among capitalism's
> wage slaves.
>
> Now, with the same ease that it was "given," the "handout"
> is being taken away. The capitalist class believes it has
> outlasted any threat from workers, and now seeks to demoralize
> the working class further by injecting its welfare victims
> back into the labor market. That is one of the problems with
> all so-called reforms under capitalism. They change nothing
> fundamental while leaving the power to rule in the hands of
> a despotic minority.
>
> The contemptuous capitalist class, seeing no evidence of
> working-class organization that might present a real threat
> to their system, has convinced itself that workers will
> continue turning the other cheek while capitalist "morality"
> bleeds them dry, or that the increasing extent of ruling-
> class control over society through the repressive apparatus
> of the political state is adequate to protect capitalist
> rule should continued impoverishment drive more workers
> to organize or otherwise retaliate.
>
> Rather than fight for more reform, workers should work to
> prove this capitalist-class assessment wrong and fight for a
> new kind of future. They must realize that placing hope in
> any capitalist antipoverty reform -- one that proposes to
> cut welfare, or to increase it -- is to place unwarranted
> credence in a monumental fraud. They must channel their
> energies toward a fundamental change.
>
> Dependence on the capitalist state and all the social
> maladies that may follow from it are produced by capitalism,
> which requires that the whole working class be dependent for
> its very right to life upon a tiny minority class that owns
> and controls the economy.
>
> Nothing will change today's picture of economic insecurity
> and poverty short of the ABOLITION of its cause -- the
> capitalist system -- and its replacement by socialism,
> under which all will share in the democratically managed
> and socially owned abundance that our advanced means of
> production can yield. Educating and organizing effectively
> for the single-minded accomplishment of that fundamental
> change will produce far more concessions to the immediate
> needs of working-class families than any appeals to
> capitalist "morality" ever could.
>
> Copyleft (c) 2000 Ken Boettcher/Socialist Labor Party.
>
>
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