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Help with US Government Assistance Statistics
Heir
Ausitn, TXRegistered User regular
Ausitn, TXRegistered User regular
With elections season upon us, and the general around the corner, I've had a ton of my very Republican family members say things about people on Welfare, saying how Democrats WANT you to be dependent on the government, and how people on government assistance are lazy.
Frankly I normally keep to myself when someone brings this kind of stuff up...but I can't really take it anymore. I want to stand up and tell them that people on welfare (for example) are for the most part NOT lazy and would much rather have a job that supports them and their families without any help from government assistance.
I found some good stats around length of time on GA...I think roughly a third of people on GA are on it for under a year...with another third (roughly) less than two years.
I could use more good stats like that to back up my arguments. Things like percent of people looking for jobs while on assistance, or those who have jobs but it's not enough to get by on that income alone.
Any help or useful tips for debating these topics would be VERY helpful. Thanks PA!
Frankly I normally keep to myself when someone brings this kind of stuff up...but I can't really take it anymore. I want to stand up and tell them that people on welfare (for example) are for the most part NOT lazy and would much rather have a job that supports them and their families without any help from government assistance.
I found some good stats around length of time on GA...I think roughly a third of people on GA are on it for under a year...with another third (roughly) less than two years.
I could use more good stats like that to back up my arguments. Things like percent of people looking for jobs while on assistance, or those who have jobs but it's not enough to get by on that income alone.
Any help or useful tips for debating these topics would be VERY helpful. Thanks PA!
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A better tactic is to go for stories of specific people that you may know. Empathizing with one person's situation is far more effective than being presented with numbers for the overall picture. This kind of work is actually harder than looking up some numbers on websites, but it can be much more convincing. Most people are ashamed and don't open up about their own poverty, which makes it harder to find these stories.
Alternatively, maybe you can try to convince your family members to go with you to a food bank or something and volunteer (a charity that puts you in direct contact with the poor). Republicans tend to lean toward Christian, and working at charities SHOULD be all within their wheelhouse. Having actual exposure to people who have problems and need government assistance should soften their view on government assistance in general. The only conservatives that I know who disparage so-called welfare queens and such are ones who haven't done this kind of charity work... it changes you.
See (slightly) more about the above here. The EITC is meant to (among other things) cover up shortfalls in other programs (the child tax credit, supplemental nutrition for needy families, etc.), while also encouraging work (because you only qualify if you work, see?); ie. it's a "welfare-to-work" program, which is (for some people) the only "good" kind of welfare. But there's a bad catch with the EITC: people who hit the phase-out point may find themselves subject to a very high marginal tax rate as government assistance, which is sometimes matched by states, drops off fast (see this):
The sudden decrease in government assistance can be brutal, and in this case it (sort of) takes the form of that great Republican bugbear: increased taxes. Without programs like the EITC to make up what they lose in payroll taxes, low and middle-income families suffer. Timothy Smeeding (writing for LIS, in 2005) examines US assistance comparatively, and notes (here):
Note that this kind of data can get old fast; Smeeding wrote the above paper before the world economy hit the skids, for example. This policy paper is much more recent (May, 2015), and its focus is comparing a minimum wage increase to an EITC expansion, which may be helpful if you're totally determined to try and talk someone around to "government assistance isn't all bad," but not so much if your position is pro-minimum-wage-increase. The Congressional Budget Office also has a lot of great material, and maintains a page with its own articles about poverty and income security. More political economics papers are available (open access) from the IZA, which has plenty of discussion papers on welfare, government assistance, labor, and more, although many have a focus outside of the US. The Luxembourg Income Study data center also has working papers online.
What they are going to hear here is that there preconceived notion is right as 1/3 of people are clearly milking the system.*
Hahnsoo1's tactic is going to work much better.
*their perspective not mine
Unfortunately(?), humans are not Vulcans.
Lengthy answer: 1st, you will never change the mind of someone who has a firmly entrenched political opinion no matter what it's based on. They have to come to any change themselves. 2nd, if this an online or group interaction, don't even bother. The best you could hope for is they don't talk about it as much, but you'll likely end up frustrated and they will think you naive or uninformed. 3rd, you can't change their mind, but possibly you can get them to question their assumptions or consider that their news sources are taking a narrow view of the issue.
To speak to the 3rd item, I like talking to people about things we deeply disagree on (and I mean live one-on-one, and I'm assuming they are intelligent). My friends and I are mostly politically like-minded, so talking to them about politics doesn't interest me much unless there is some commitment to organize some kind of action. I never get to analyze why I think what I think or how I think what I think unless I'm trying to figure out how someone else is thinking. And that's all I want out of that kind of interaction (talking to someone I deeply disagree with); just trying to understand how they are thinking, not trying to convince them of anything. Usually this will result in getting to some prime assumptions and we're just going to agree to disagree.
A simplified example. Had a talk with a close relative about the minimum wage. After a bunch of b-school and finance discussion I concede that business owners may see increased payroll costs, may have to adjust staffing, may have to raise prices, etc. I talk about some people who earn minimum wage. How they may not pull 40 hours, they may not have benefits, they may not have a regular work schedule, they may lose a shift or more if they have a sick child, they may be working multiple jobs, they may not have reliable personal transportation, they may not have professional skills to get a better job or the resources to go to technical training or university. It was a civil discussion. I'm sure I didn't convince him of crap. But I like to think maybe he questioned, at least for awhile, the assumptions his convictions were built on, or that the issue was more complicated than he may have been giving credit.