As a Public Policy Major I really enjoy exploring new policy solutions, especially ones that challenge the paradigms and ideologies that currently dominate those fields of policy. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that a lot of the policies we have in place today treat those that they effect as less than human. A great example of this is modern welfare policy. Culturally, Americans see those in poverty as unworthy and undeserving people. People suffering from poverty are believed to be there only as a result of their own mistakes and flaws. In fact, this belief could not be further from the truth. In the United States, as in countries all around the world, poverty is cyclical. Those born into poverty almost always stay there all their lives as a result of the limitless barricades to social elevation they face. Poverty is created, maintained, and even expanded by the system we live under. People become trapped in what can be called a poverty trap, as the Huffington Post describes here. Yet we do not combat poverty as a systemic failure and issue, we see it as a flaw in an individual's character or an individual mistake and create policies that reflect that belief.

This cultural belief translates into incredibly paternalistic policies on both sides of the political isle. The welfare policies that we do implement dictate exactly how people can use the benefits they receive. For example, money received for Food Stamps, or SNAP as it is now called, can only be used to pay for food and WIC can only be used by mothers to pay for child care supplies. We make these benefits conditional. A good example of this, one that has received lots of criticism, is drug testing those who receive welfare benefits. Another example is setting a level of income which individuals or households must fall below to qualify for said benefits; a level which is often far too low when compared with the actual expenses of living a safe life in our country. These policies treat people in poverty on the whole, anyone who needs the assistance of welfare in any capacity, as completely irresponsible and undeserving. They define poverty as a failure on the individual level and make it abundantly clear that anyone who fails to win this rigged game of American Capitalism is not worthy to manage their own lives, to be responsible for themselves.

In addition to this inhuman treatment of those forced to live on welfare, the policies we have designed do absolutely nothing to elevate people out of poverty or help people to elevate themselves out of it. For some time now, welfare policy has only ever been designed to prevent people from falling below a certain level of poverty. Once a person or family falls below a certain level of income, they become eligible for welfare benefits. However, the flip side of this holds true as well. Once a family or individual rises above a certain level of income, they are no longer eligible for the welfare benefits they once were. In some cases, what Phillipe Van Parijs calls an unemployment trap can occur. This happens when the value of the benefits a person is receiving are actually worth more than the money they would be making if they had a job that paid enough money to disqualify them from those benefits.

It is true that many welfare policies, especially after the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act passed in 1996, have a number of requirements for people receiving welfare benefits. These requirements include things like requiring people to be looking for work, among many other things. The requirements and benefits are meant to incentivize people to get off the benefits, but they do nothing to deal with what brought people to need them in the first place. They do nothing to combat the real cause of poverty, one which is so simple you will be mad when I tell you. The true cause of poverty is simply a lack of money. The people in poverty simply could not make enough money to not be in poverty and as I stated before, that is no fault of their own, it is a systemic issue. Wages are not high enough and have stagnated for decades in comparison to GDP and there are just not enough high paying jobs available in our economy today. There are many reasons for this happening, check out Lawrence Mishel's piece here to read more on that.

The bottom line is that people don't have the money to get out of poverty by working the jobs available to them. As a result, poverty in America is growing, as is inequality, and more and more people need welfare benefits that do nothing to help them elevate themselves out of poverty. So what is the answer? To me, it is quite simple, give people more money. It can come in the form of raising wages, for example, the $15 minimum wage that has become so popular, but longer term I think we need something more. We need an overhaul of our welfare system. We need to create an entirely new paradigm of welfare, one that does not just benefit people who are in dire need of it. One that does not just elevate people out of poverty, but instead prevents poverty as we know it from existing. You might think I'm crazy for suggesting something like this, but it is a policy that has been tossed around for some time now, on both sides of the political spectrum. The policy I am talking about is of course a Universal Basic Income guaranteed to all people everywhere. Stay tuned for part 2 to find out what that might look like and how we could and will eventually do it.