COLUMN: Welfare column ignored facts
To the editor:
This letter is in response to the op-ed piece “Worth more if you’re poor.” The article comes out against the idea of equally distributing wealth, and though I agree with the author that redistributing wealth is a bad idea, I strongly disagree with the arguments used in the article.
The article argues that in the U.S people are valued for what they can contribute and that race, gender or any other factors are irrelevant to our society. I would invite this author to ask the college educated disabled adults of Utah (94 percent of whom are unemployed) if they think they were judged by only their merits. This article makes the assumption that those who have felt the sting of discrimination were somehow making it up, or just trying to excuse their “lazy” behavior.
The article then goes on to state that persons who receive unemployment don’t want to work, and wait until the last minute to start looking for a job. This statement is pure calumny and is based on little or no factual evidence. Local news sources have done many stories about unemployment in recent months and have found no basis for this statement. As for those who receive state welfare, since 1996 they have been required to be employed full time. When they are out of work they have to spend the equivalent of four hours a day at the department of workforce services actively looking for work in order to continue receiving benefits.
The article then repeats an argument that has been used since before the author was born, that if you give people a supplement to their income that they will not want to work. This argument chooses to assume that work ethic is somehow attached to the economic class you are born into, that is simply not the case. The pride I felt in working was not lessened in the least by the fact that I received food stamps or SSI. If you speak to most “poor” people you will find they feel the same.
The author then switches tactics and says that without government programs, people will respect the poor. The article says that society as a whole will respect the poor as long as they can contribute fully to the economy, so to restate: Society will respect the poor as long as they are not in fact poor.
Aaron Timm