The social safety net (new policy proposal)

I was down in NYC to see Hamilton earlier this week, and saw a bunch of relatives and friends while I was at it. I ended up listening to one of them, a man who tends to vote Republican and is contemplating a vote for Trump, as he described his reasons.

Basically, he has a lot of contact professionally with poor black folks in the area. He’s won recognition in newspapers for good work. From my interactions with him, I judge that he’s a man of high caliber. What bothers him is the amount of abuse of the social safety net that he sees, and the unmotivated attitude from the young people he works with from their culture.

This is a concern I’ve heard before from others. It isn’t just black folk being blamed, either. I was observing a history class in my (very white) high school when the teacher asked students how many of them knew someone who was abusing government welfare in one form or another, and about a third of the class raised their hands.

The problem is that the right wing always talks about cutting funding and cutting services, rather than structural reform which could absolutely address their legitimate concerns without opposition from the left wing.

Our social safety net system was built piecemeal over many years and separate items of legislation. Consolidating and simplifying the system is overdue.

I think that a solid majority of Americans can get on board with capping the amount of non-medical support per person available through social safety net programs. With today’s networked computer systems, it wouldn’t be too hard to manage.

Ideally, in my opinion, we’d raise the minimum wage to $15, and then cap the social safety net a bit below a full time job at $15/hour, but I don’t insist on it.

If the ‘welfare queen’ is a myth, the cap won’t do much. If it’s a reality, it will end it.