The Struggle of America to Keep Poverty at Bay

Poverty in America remains an unsolvable issue in the nation todayi Two issues that plague society to this day are welfare and minimum wage. First of all minimum wage is slowly suffocating our country and the free market that our nation’s economy is designed to be. The minimum wage became law in 1938 and was designed to help the poor be able to make ends meet. However it has since backfired and is harming the economy. Workers are not paid what the job is actually worth; instead they are paid minimum wage with little hope of a raise.

Most minimum wage employers only employ part time staff. Therefore employees are not allowed to work over 40 hours a week. This hinders the amount that the employees are being paid for their labor thus hindering the amount that employees are able to use to pay bills, buy groceries, and pay for their children's school books. Minimum wage has often been referred to as a safety net but most often times it acts as a strait jacket.

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Secondly if a person is out of work for an extended amount of time or they are unable to work they are put on welfare or some other form of government aide.

Welfare was enacted as a way to help struggling people get back on their feet and back into the work force.

However people have figured out that to be on welfare you cannot be working, so unemployed people are being paid by food stamps and welfare checks not to work in the work force. Howard BaetjerJr. writes “These sad results fit well what we might expect from the theoretical expectations. . . . Where there are incentives against self-sufficiency and productiveness, people will tend to become less self-sufficient and productive. The bigger the incentives, the stronger the tendencies." He continues by saying “In any case. welfare, the dole, poor relief icall it what you williis a spectacular failure. More than that, if the reasoning presented here is sound, it is one of the vast tragic ironies of our age. It springs from the desire of good-hearted people to see poverty diminished, but in practice, apparently, it augments poverty.

The fault is not in our intentions, but in our methods...” The government had great intentions for helping the struggling people of the nation and boosting the economy by allowing the unemployed to buy the necessities, however the method by which the government has tried to help has proven to be a failure. Baetjer goes on to say "'To quit this business of relief,’ to end ‘the days of the dole,’ we might well find it best simply to do it. let the officials design policy — this is, do away with policies — according to the classical Liberal principle that 'the force of law should never be used to benefit some people at the expense of others,’ not even it those benefiting are poor. Le care of that really needy be returned to individual responsibility — to genuine, private charity and efficient, private organizations,” The government does not owe us, we are not their responsibility to provide for. The Bible states.

Thessalonians 3:10 that “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat," Even in Proverbs 6:6-8 the Lord says to look to the ant and learn how to work, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer and gathereth her food for in the ham/est." Lastly the responsibility should be on the individual, the family, and then the church for the care of those who are struggling. Consideriames 1:27 which speaks about the individual believer’s responsibility ”Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world." If the nation lived by this where all the churches and families stepped up and helped those that are in poverty and struggling, the government would have no reason to step in to “help".