Critical Thinking; Welfare fraud

     On Friday, December 2, 2016, GOVT 2305 published an article titled “Welfare Fraud.” In this article, the author argues that the welfare system of America has a lot of problems, and the worst problem is the fraud of selfish people. Of course, the system gives help to the people in need, so government should go on operating for the people. However, there are pretty many people using the system for satisfying their greed even though they do not need the benefit of the system. Therefore, the selfish people preventing the fair distribution of welfare by deceiving government must be extirpated as the author said.

     Extirpating the selfish people should be done for the people in need who cannot get the benefit of welfare system. This is because the people in need can be left behind at the priority order of people who can get benefit as the selfish people occupy the prior order. Also, the fraud of them even can lead wasteful spending of taxes. As a result, there are still many people who really need government’s aid, but did not get it although government estimates the amount for the welfare system every year and sets the budget according to the estimation. Accordingly, government can increase taxes in order to lessen the intensive voice of citizens demanding financial aids. However, there is a limit to increasing taxes, so it can make the possibility higher for government to have high national debt. Therefore, the selfish people’s inconsiderable acts should be harmful to entire American nation although they just think their acts as minor impact upon the welfare system.

     Of course, the fraud of the selfish people is not the only problem of the governmental welfare system. Actually, it is impossible that the hand of government is reached to all of the people in need carefully. In other words, government cannot help all of the poor people. Thus, helping from more smaller bodies such as neighbors’ help or local government’s aids should be necessary to complement the welfare system. Also, government should develop the operation system of welfare with the continuous question how the aid for the poor can be distributed well. However, extirpating some of people’s selfish acts should be one of the most important corrections for the welfare system.

What US government should do?; who will pay for the "free" service?

      As the interest in the free child care system increases, the issue about who will pay for the “free service” is getting controversial as well. Actually, the biggest concern is that implementing the free service can increase taxes. Of course, it is inevitable for government to use a tax, but the problem is limitation of using a tax; the amount of tax that can be allocated to a policy is limited. Generally, government collects more money from citizens to solve the problem. However, increasing taxes contradicts the purpose of the free child care policy that is releasing the economic burden of citizens. It is difficult to overcome the dilemma, but it can be possible if a lot of individuals’ voluntary support accumulate.

     Then what is the individuals’ voluntary support? The donating system of Word Vision can be an example of it. As each donator of Word Vision supports one child in the poor countries, each family can support one child of a family which needs the free child care. For example, each daycare institution can ask whether every family which visits there to put their child in day care have the intention of donating a little money for a child of a low income family. Someone might take the suggestion with pleasure, on the other hand, there should be someone who refuses it. However, parents are more likely to feel sorry for the situation of the children who are left alone when their parents go to work than the others. Therefore, each volunteered families can support a child to the degree that they do not feel pressure, or some families share the cost of day care for a child of a low income family. Then the governmental cost for implementing the free child care policy might decrease, and the low income family’s burden of paying increased taxes might be released.

     Now that this method just needs people’s warm heart, it may not need a lot of financial support to promote it. As a result, it can produce high efficiency with low cost. Of course, it has a problem how many families will be interested in the donation and donate for the children, but it seems possible to be succeed in collecting a lot of participation in the method as Word Vision saves many children in the poor countries. Even if not many families would volunteer to help the children, a few families’s help can be a great support to some of the low income families who have trouble in caring their children at where the hand of government does not reach. Furthermore, the method might be much more successful than people expect because the world is still warm.