Download or read book The Other Side of the Coin written by Christopher G. Faricy and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2021-02-25 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite high levels of inequality and wage stagnation over several decades, the United States has done relatively little to address these problems—at least in part due to public opinion, which remains highly influential in determining the size and scope of social welfare programs that provide direct benefits to retirees, unemployed workers or poor families. On the other hand, social tax expenditures—or tax subsidies that help citizens pay for expenses such as health insurance or the cost of college and invest in retirement plans—have been widely and successfully implemented, and they now comprise nearly 40 percent of the spending of the American social welfare state. In The Other Side of the Coin, political scientists Christopher Ellis and Christopher Faricy examine public opinion towards social tax expenditures—the other side of the American social welfare state—and their potential to expand support for such social investment. Tax expenditures seek to accomplish many of the goals of direct government expenditures, but they distribute money indirectly, through tax refunds or reductions in taxable income, rather than direct payments on goods and services or benefits. They tend to privilege market-based solutions to social problems such as employer-based tax subsidies for purchasing health insurance versus government-provided health insurance. Drawing on nationally representative surveys and survey experiments, Ellis and Faricy show that social welfare policies designed as tax expenditures, as opposed to direct spending on social welfare programs, are widely popular with the general public. Contrary to previous research suggesting that recipients of these subsidies are often unaware of indirect government aid—sometimes called “the hidden welfare state”—Ellis and Faricy find that citizens are well aware of them and act in their economic self-interest in supporting tax breaks for social welfare purposes. The authors find that many people view the beneficiaries of social tax expenditures to be more deserving of government aid than recipients of direct public social programs, indicating that how government benefits are delivered affects people’s views of recipients’ worthiness. Importantly, tax expenditures are more likely to appeal to citizens with anti-government attitudes, low levels of trust in government, or racial prejudices. As a result, social spending conducted through the tax code is likely to be far more popular than direct government spending on public programs that have the same goals. The first empirical examination of the broad popularity of tax expenditures, The Other Side of the Coin provides compelling insights into constructing a politically feasible—and potentially bipartisan—way to expand the scope of the American welfare state.
Download or read book The Other Side of Welfare written by Pamela L. Cave and published by Capital Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One woman's frustrating ordeal with the welfare system, how she succeeded, and how other families can do the same.
Download or read book Living on the Edge written by Mark R. Rank and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on ten years of research, the book follows individuals and families as they apply for and live on public aid and eventually leave the system. Rank's chronicle of their day-to-day experiences reveals the many sacrifices and crises that tax ordinary people in extraordinary ways. Beginning with a history of welfare from Roosevelt to Clinton, he focuses on AFDC and the Food Stamp program. He then describes the backgrounds of the recipients, their hopes for the future and attitudes toward welfare, their daily routines and problems, their work behavior, and the effect of welfare on family dynamics. Living on the Edge reveals the experiences of female-headed families, married couples, single men and women, and the elderly.
Download or read book Take the Rich Off Welfare written by Mark Zepezauer and published by South End Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the first version of this book came out in 1996, on the heels of "Welfare Reform," it was received with great popular acclaim. As Jim Hightower put it, "At last, the real welfare scandal [is] revealed in one handy little -volume." But the scandal was still in the making. The total amount of taxpayers' money going to subsidize corporations and rich individuals has grown from about $448 billion to over $800 billion--and the amount of that tax money that comes from those flush companies and individuals continues to shrink. In this greatly expanded and updated version of Take the Rich off Welfare, Mark Zepezauer still details who's on the government dole and how much they're getting. This time around, though, he has slowed down his rapid firing of the latest names and numbers in order to reveal how it all works. Using accessible language and revealing graphics, he takes the time to explain how programs once intended to profit the public have been warped to benefit only the corporate bottom line; how administrations manipulate the tax code to slide their extortion from the bottom half past congressional oversight; and how the politicians from both parties employ budget doubletalk and paper trickery to make it look as if the economy isn't being sucked further into a sinkhole in order to line the pockets of the few. A prolific writer of humorous but cutting analyses of government policy and its fallout, Zepezauer provides us with the tools we need to expose the political chicanery of current and past administrations, and make it much more difficult for politicians to play Three Card Monte with our money and our future. To the rallying cry of fiscal conservatives who claim that government must shrink, Zepezauer offers an easy answer. Shrink you. Mark Zepezauer has worked as a journalist, editor and publisher since 1985. His articles, columns and reviews have appeared in the Village Voice, In These Times and the Arizona Daily Star. Zepezauer also wrote two Real Story books (now published by South End Press): The CIA's Greatest Hits (1994) and the first version of Take the Rich Off Welfare (1996), which have sold over 25,000 and 22,000 copies respec
Download or read book Wealth and Welfare States written by Irwin Garfinkel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-28 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Including education has profound consequences, undergirding the case for the productivity of welfare state programs and the explanation for why all rich nations have large welfare states, and identifying US welfare state leadership. From 1968 through 2006, the United States swung right politically and lost its lead in education and opportunity, failed to adopt universal health insurance and experienced the most rapid explosion of health care costs and economic inequality in the rich world. The American welfare state faces large challenges. Restoring its historical lead in education is the most important but requires investing large sums in education, beginning with universal pre-school and in complementary programs that aid children's development.
Download or read book From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State written by David T. Beito and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-06-19 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, more Americans belonged to fraternal societies than to any other kind of voluntary association, with the possible exception of churches. Despite the stereotypical image of the lodge as the exclusive domain of white men, fraternalism cut across race, class, and gender lines to include women, African Americans, and immigrants. Exploring the history and impact of fraternal societies in the United States, David Beito uncovers the vital importance they had in the social and fiscal lives of millions of American families. Much more than a means of addressing deep-seated cultural, psychological, and gender needs, fraternal societies gave Americans a way to provide themselves with social-welfare services that would otherwise have been inaccessible, Beito argues. In addition to creating vast social and mutual aid networks among the poor and in the working class, they made affordable life and health insurance available to their members and established hospitals, orphanages, and homes for the elderly. Fraternal societies continued their commitment to mutual aid even into the early years of the Great Depression, Beito says, but changing cultural attitudes and the expanding welfare state eventually propelled their decline.
Download or read book The Other Side of the World written by Mary Jo Clark and published by Strategic Book Publishing. This book was released on 2011-07 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Other Side of the World: Vision and Reality embraces and celebrates the experiences of idealistic, young Peace Corps volunteers as they confronted the ancient and enigmatic civilization of India four decades ago. Prompted by memories and emotions tapped during a gathering on the 40-year reunion of their return to the States, members of India 44 A&B provide reflections that are honest, compelling, insightful, riotous, humbling, and yet redemptive. These reflections give expression to feelings long repressed and, at the same time, uncover the mysterious ways in which their service in remote India transformed and redirected the trajectory of their lives. Their stories provide a humorous and deeply moving description of village life, where imperfect language skills and limited technical capabilities interacted with good intentions and stubborn dedication to produce embarrassment on the one hand, and the occasional minor miracle on the other. This is not a feel-good testimony to the Peace Corps on its golden anniversary. Rather, it is a sobering depiction of the lives of volunteers living in one of the Peace Corps' most demanding site countries, where frustrations and challenges were found in abundance. Yet at the end of the day, these stories generally attest to the wisdom of the Peace Corps concept, which affirms the powers of volunteerism and the giving of self. For many, it was the first time these volunteers had articulated their feelings since leaving India. Mary Jo Clark, Thomas Corbett, Michael Simonds and Haywood Turrentine compiled the book. Respectively, the authors reside in San Diego, California, Madison, Wisconsin, the greater Hartford area, and Birmingham, Alabama. http: //sbpra.com/HaywoodTurrentine
Download or read book So You Think I Drive a Cadillac written by Karen Seccombe and published by Allyn & Bacon. This book was released on 2007 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This down-to-earth look at the welfare system provides readers with stories from welfare recipients themselves and from those who recently left welfare for work: how they got onto welfare, what the reality of welfare (and welfare reform) is for them, issues in raising their families, their plans, hopes, and dreams are for the future, and some of the struggles they face as they try to leave the welfare system. Welfare recipients who were interviewed by the author in Florida and Oregon share their perspectives on work requirements, family caps, time limits, and other features of the new welfare reform (TANF) program. They discuss the importance of a livable wage and health insurance in providing the needed security to leave welfare for good. These qualitative interviews are theoretically grounded, and supplemented with up-to-date statewide and national data on welfare reform and its consequences. The author says, "Underneath the political rhetoric and welfare statistics are real live human beings who are trying to make sense out of their lives." Their voices provide a crucial counterpoint to the politicians and policy "experts" who have shaped the policy reform initiative. They show us that the so-called welfare problem is related to the insecurity of low-tier work in the United States.
Download or read book The War on Welfare written by Marisa Chappell and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the fate of the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, this comprehensive history of the thirty year war over welfare shows how stubborn allegiance to the male-headed household undermined the struggle for economic justice.
Download or read book Making Sense of Public Opinion written by Claudia Strauss and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-15 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions about immigration and social welfare programs raise the central issues of who belongs to a society and what its members deserve. Yet the opinions of the American public about these important issues seem contradictory and confused. Claudia Strauss explains why: public opinion on these issues and many others is formed not from liberal or conservative ideologies but from diverse vernacular discourses that may not fit standard ideologies but are easy to remember and repeat. Drawing on interviews with people from various backgrounds, Strauss identifies and describes 59 conventional discourses about immigration and social welfare and demonstrates how we acquire conventional discourses from our opinion communities. Making Sense of Public Opinion: American Discourses about Immigration and Social Programs explains what conventional discourses are, how to study them, and why they are fundamental elements of public opinion and political culture.
Download or read book The Economics of Welfare written by Arthur Cecil Pigou and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 948 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Poverty of Welfare written by Michael Tanner and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2003 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1996 Welfare Reform Act was the most significant changes in social welfare policy in nearly 30 years. The Poverty of Welfare examines the impact of that reform, looking at the context of welfare's history, and concludes that while welfare reform was a step in the right direction, we have a long way to go to fix the deeply troubled system.
Download or read book Freedom Equality and the Market written by Barry Hindess and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new textbook for students of social theory considers the role of public intervention in social and economic processes. It is a clear, critical discussion of different theoretical and political perspectives on social policy. Freedom, Equality, and the Market, with its careful assessment of the key texts, will be important reading for undergraduate students of sociology and social policy.
Download or read book Outsourcing Welfare written by Roy Germano and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Remittances and the politics of austerity -- Outsourcing social welfare: how migrants replaced the state during Mexico's market transition -- How remittances prevent social unrest: evidence from the Mexican countryside -- Optimism in times of crisis: remittances and economic security in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East -- They came banging pots and pans: remittances and government approval in Sub-Saharan Africa during the food crisis -- No left turn: remittances and incumbent support in Mexico's closely-contested 2006 presidential election -- Conclusion
Download or read book Social Ontology of Whoness written by Michael Eldred and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How are core social phenomena to be understood as modes of being? This book offers an alternative approach to social ontology. Recent interest in social ontology on the part of mainstream philosophy and the social sciences presupposes from the outset that the human being can be cast as a conscious subject whose intentionality can be collective. By contrast, the present study insistently poses the crucial question of who the human being is and how they sociate as whos. Such whoness is a clean-cut departure from the venerable tradition of questioning whatness (quidditas, essence) in philosophical thinking. Casting human being hermeneutically as whoness opens up new insights into how human beings sociate in interplays of mutual estimation that are simultaneously social power plays. Hitherto, the ontology of social power in all its various guises, has only ever been implicit. This book makes it explicit. The kind of social power prevalent in capitalist societies is that of the reified value embodied in commodities, money, capital, & co. Reified value itself is constituted through an interplay of mutual estimation among things that reflects back on the power interplay among whos. In this way a new critique of capitalism becomes possible.
Download or read book Self interest written by Kelly Rogers and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Stretched Thin written by Sandra L. Morgen and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act became law in 1996, the architects of welfare reform celebrated what they called the new "consensus" on welfare: that cash assistance should be temporary and contingent on recipients' seeking and finding employment. However, assessments about the assumptions and consequences of this radical change to the nation's social safety net were actually far more varied and disputed than the label "consensus" suggests. By examining the varied realities and accountings of welfare restructuring, Stretched Thin looks back at a critical moment of policy change and suggests how welfare policy in the United States can be changed to better address the needs of poor families and the nation. Using ethnographic observations, in-depth interviews with poor families and welfare workers, survey data tracking more than 750 families over two years, and documentary evidence, Sandra Morgen, Joan Acker, and Jill Weigt question the validity of claims that welfare reform has been a success. They show how poor families, welfare workers, and welfare administrators experienced and assessed welfare reform differently based on gender, race, class, and their varying positions of power and control within the welfare state. The authors document the ways that, despite the dramatic drop in welfare rolls, low-wage jobs and inadequate social supports left many families struggling in poverty. Revealing how the neoliberal principles of a drastically downsized welfare state and individual responsibility for economic survival were implemented through policies and practices of welfare provision and nonprovision, the authors conclude with new recommendations for reforming welfare policy to reduce poverty, promote economic security, and foster shared prosperity.
