So, President Clinton, as if to dispel any lingering impressions that he was a liberal, has signed a bill “to end Welfare as we know it.” Bully for him. Sometimes, a President has to do something unpopular, even if that unpopularity is only mostly among a constituency (poor people) who aren’t known for devoting a lot of time and attention to the democratic process.
The problem with ending Welfare as we know it is that nobody knows what will replace it. What does devolving power to set Welfare rates and conditions of eligibility to the States mean? Allow me to suggest one possible scenario.
Half the States in the union will immediately drop their Welfare rates to $100 a month for living expenses and $50 a month for shelter. In order to be eligible, you must prove that your savings are not greater than $24.95 (marked down from $29.95), and that you have been unemployed for two years or more.
Many people may find these standards perfectly reasonable. However, using the long-standing rule of thumb that spending less on Welfare means lower corporate taxes (the Greeks referred to this concept as Xeno’s Harebrained Other Paradox), individual states will lower their rates to attract business. This will lead to Welfare competition (and isn’t competition the basis of the American system?).
California, for instance, might keep the payment rates of the other states, but with an additional eligibility condition: potential recipients would have to dress up for no less than six months as Mickey Mouse and great patrons of Disneyland. Creative? Sure. But other states can do better…
The legislature of the great state of Tennessee will cut living expenses to $75 a month and require Welfare recipients to spend six months in a maximum security prison where beefy members of the same sex with lots of tattoos on both accessible and inaccessible parts of their bodies will ask the recipients to dance. Insist upon it, actually. (No, Smartypants, this would not fall under the prohibition against “cruel and unusual” punishment; they’re not there because they’ve committed a crime, after all, just because they’re poor.)
Not to be outdone, Rhode Island (small in area but big on business), will cut living expenses to $50 AND the shelter allowance to $25. (If you have children, consider selling them to a nearby medical research laboratory.) In addition, your savings cannot be more than $19.95 and, to be eligible, you must agree to spend a year as a page in the state legislature. (Better watch those roaming hands, ladies and gentlemen!)
Stern measures, to be sure. But only the beginning.
In order to get even these reduced rates from the Iowa Welfare office, you will have to show that your net worth is not greater than two dozen returnable beer bottles (or three dozen returnable cans) or is made up entirely of vinyl 45 rpm singles.
Of course, if two states declared their new rates at the same time, businesses looking for a new place to locate could be faced with a dilemma. Suppose, for instance, that North Carolina announced that it was, henceforth and forthwith, going to make Welfare payments in rubles. At the same time, South Dakota decided that anybody who made a Welfare claim would have to take a blood test — if you had blood, you were ineligible.
Weighing the relative merits of the two systems would be difficult, indeed. Still, business would have to accomodate itself to such problems: after all, consumer choice is the basis of the American system. Uhh, the other basis of the American system, I mean.
Then along will come Arkansas to make the question moot. Welfare rates will be dropped to $5 per month for living expenses and a quarter for shelter. To be eligible, your family will have to have been in debt for at least five generations and you will have to be able to prove that you have been legally dead for five years.
Of course, you will be expected to collect your check in person.
Hmm…come to think of it, making life hard for the poor has been something of an American pasttime for over a decade. The government may have to use a completely different approach if it is to truly “end Welfare as we know it.” It may even have to do something…creative.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.