Overcoming Welfare: Expecting More From The Poor And From Ourselves

A fundamental goal of today's welfare reform is to practice ”expectant giving”: to demand constructive steps from the needy in exchange for assistance. This idea is not new. Since the nineteenth century, every generation of reformers has declared that handouts are harmfulFranklin Roosevelt called them ”a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”and that aid must demand something of recipients. Liberals and conservatives, bureaucrats and church leaders have all agreed that the purpose of welfare is not simply to keep people housed and fed with giveaways but to raise them to a happier, more productive condition. Welfare should be ”a hand up, not a hand out.”Why, then, no matter how often welfare is reinvented, do we keep getting the system nobody wants?In Overcoming Welfare , James Payne analyzes the roots of this recurring failure. Part of the problem, he observes, lies with modern social workers who have embraced the doctrine of meeting needs at all costs. Adding to the handout mentality is the ideology of income redistribution, which says the poor are automatically entitled to state giveaways.The most important cause of failure, however, is that government is not suited to carry out expectant giving. Such aid requires that the giver pass judgment; that recipients with different abilities and circumstances be treated unequally; that aid be withheld from recipients who don't keep their end of the bargain; and that a personal relationship of trust exist between giver and recipient. With their high caseloads, inflexible rules, and budgetary pressures to streamline aid, government welfare programs inevitably drift toward the handout approach.The future of charity belongs to private, voluntary efforts that have the sensitivity and discipline to meet the real needs of the poor. In his broad survey of the many different types of private assistance. Payne demonstrates that we can go beyond the sorry choice of being indulgent or being cruelbut only if we are willing to extend ourselves.