I haven’t ever really felt that social policy has the ability to change poverty in this country and after reading DeParle I am even more pessimistic that it will ever get better. The stories of Opal, Jewell and Angie not only are depressing to read but created frustration and anger for me. I think I started the book thinking that I would be given some answers or solutions to the problems of our social welfare system but instead it left me thinking that it’s a never ending cycle with no chance of moving up in society. One review of DeParle’s book from Dissent Magazine author David Glenn echoes my sentiments by saying, “DeParle doubts that welfare played a major role in causing family breakdown in the first place and also seems to doubt that public policy can do much to repair family breakdown today. We’re left with the helpless feeling of watching people drift from crisis to crisis.” I find the word helpless to best sum up my feelings. The review also went on to say, “No one who reads this book attentively will close it with the idea that if only these people would clean up their acts and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, all would be well.” What happened to Clinton’s idea that we could give a new generation of people the “piss and vinegar” that our ancestors had. It just hasn’t worked out that way.
Our welfare policy is based on the idea that we learned, which is, liberty requires positive help from others and society to ensure basic resources. It is our moral obligation to provide opportunities to the poor. We are given plenty of examples in DeParle’s book that shows us how this is done through our welfare system. The girls in the book are given a welfare check and later help to find work. But the lives of those on welfare can never be equal to the rest of us and I think DeParle was trying to say this. They operate in a different world other than normal society. Even the welfare system isn’t enough to give them a leg up. They find ways to keep the welfare check and get paid from a job on the side operating completely outside the system. They realize from the beginning that it doesn’t work in their favor and they just do anything else in order to survive.
Where is there equality if you live in a system that isn’t fair to begin with? Yes, we are treating them equal by providing opportunity and resources but why do they seem to continually be unequal and even more unequal as time goes on? “Without the security of having one’s basic needs met, a person can’t make free choices.” (Stone, p. 126) I believe that there will never be a welfare system that can ever lead to equality because we all have a different idea of what equality is and what are basic needs. We have different tastes, abilities, disabilities, dreams, desires etc. Not to mention that we live in a society that treats men and women differently, races and sexual preferences to name a few. How could we place one equal value on resources when we all want and need something different? A published article I read on equality and welfare discusses these points and offers this statement, “If we want genuinely to treat people as equals (or so it may seem) then we must contrive to make their lives equally desirable to them, or give them the means to do so, not simply to make the figures in their bank accounts the same.” Is this possible? I believe that DeParle thinks there is a liberty-welfare tradeoff. The world we live in is too complicated.
Sara, I absolutely agree with your sentiments regarding the book. I too was left with a feeling of helplessness. I was curious if DeParle had anyone that came away with a lifted spirit about the welfare system and poverty in general. The quote you used at the end of your post sums it up quite well.
Sarah – this is a great post and you have captured the ideas very, very well. I am grateful for the reference to the article – I am enjoying it immensely. I was struck by this quote.
“So it follows that only when the poor lack sufficient opportunity to satisfy their own basic needs would their right to welfare have
any practical moral force.”
It made me rethink the relationship between the liberty welfare trade off and the liberty equality trade off. Thanks. Well done.