> A few pensees on the welfare state.
. This is well-taken,
> but there is a fair amount of mobility out of 'poverty'
> into 'the middle class' and back again.a....
> A lot of people who make use of AFDC/TANF
> are there for brief spells, which means that otherwise
> they are in the 'middle class' social insurance system.
Yes, there's a literature about this. Brief spells is an awfully mild lingo and it hardly means they're back in the saddle (middle class) again. The longitudinal work pointed out how more common it is for households to experience substantial financial hardship, so much so that they require government support in such things as food stamps and public assistance. Vulnerability is much greater than static census stats suggest. And that middle class social insurance system is itself a bit threadbare, especially since the long-term trend of tightening eligibility for unemployment compensation, making it taxable, it keeping the amounts received low (however much things might have changed in the past couple of months).
> You 'get poor' and
> eligible for this program with some modest financial
> planning. 2/3rds of Medicaid is in fact for the elderly,
> some of whom has always been poor, many not.
I don't understand this.
> In the 90s, the expansion of the EITC (and last year,
> the Child Tax Credit) is also a significant source of
> aid to low-income families.
Significant if only one has a CPA to assist.
> States are
> able to shuffle people out of TANF proper and into other
> programs where they can get cash assistance, and there are
> those formerly on the cash caseload who now get work-tested
> benefits, both in and out of TANF. There are more people
> getting public benefits then is evident from the caseload
> figures.
Interesting point, but what are these other cash assistance programs beyond TANF? And how typical do people get shuffle into different programs as opposed to being shuffled off altogether or never get a chance to get on the gov's shuffle dance card. There's always that problem that income maintanance staff strive to get people ineligible for programs or don't bother to inform clients of the resources they are eligible for.
> The left seems to understand this everywhere
> but in the U.S., where we are obsessed with the rich and make
> them pay a bit more in tax while our public squalor persists.
>
Yes, well, once you start eating the rich, you can never quite kick that habit. I mean, their well-fed and less disease ridden and cook-up quite well with basil, garlic, and bit of olive oil.
Dennis Breslin