Human beings thrive on work.
Independent of money,
work brings us satisfaction,
fulfillment, and happiness.
It's indisputable.
Work and happiness are
deeply linked.
But for these Americans, finding
sustainable work is a daily challenge.
There are 47 million Americans who
live in poverty, and survive only
with the aid of a complex system of
public assistance.
But this well-meaning system can
have devastating consequences.
There's so many good people that-
who are just in an unfortunate
circumstance who just get left behind.
Welfare was like last option for me.
People would look at me in disgust,
I want to explain to them, I'm
going through something right now;
this isn't me.
You know...understand.
None of us likes the idea of
supporting people who can't support
themselves; and the poor, most of all,
don't like the idea of
being on the dole.
Once you're poor, there's no
getting out of it!
I don't care!
There's no getting out of it.
You know a lot better welfare
system would be one that allowed
people to try to get out without
penalizing them.
The real cost of welfare is the
human cost of welfare.
It's not the dollar cost.
Each year the financial cost mounts
- as does the human cost of welfare.
Major funding for this program
has been provided by:
L.E. Phillips Family Foundation.
Chris and Melodie Rufer.
Additional funding was provided by:
Family Muhlenkamp Charitable Fund
of The Pittsburgh Foundation.
Harvey Cody.
Each month here in Washington,
D.C. the Bureau of Labor Statistics
issues its report on the number of
Americans who have gone to work.
Work is vitally important to
Americans and to everyone,
everywhere.
It's not just a paycheck;
it's an essential component of
our self-worth, our confidence,
our happiness.
I'm Johan Norberg, a writer and
analyst from Sweden, and I've long
been interested in the dynamic
connection between work
and happiness.
Dignity is found in a hard day's work,
on a farm, in a factory,
in a shop, or at a desk.
But what happens when a person
can't find work?
Here in the United States and in
developed countries all around the
world, governments have created
welfare programs.
Their admirable intention is to
help the poor by providing a safety
net to help get people back on
their feet.
But here in the U.S., research
suggests that the various programs
in the state and federal system
we call "welfare," often hurt the
people they are designed to help.
We will meet real people whose
dreams and aspirations are
defined and confined by a
well-meaning system.
Their stories represent millions of
others for whom the safety net has
become a trap.
Their challenges and the odds they
face are daunting,
often insurmountable.
It reminds me how
important it is that I need to be
self-sustaining, that I need to
be independent.
Chris is a divorced mother to four
daughters, one of whom was born
with cerebral palsy and requires
constant care.
She seeks the independence she once
had through a career, but the
system seems to work against her.
I just expect more out of life
and better.
I didn't wake up saying I wanted to
be on welfare, because welfare was
like last option for me.
Monique was born into poverty.
She recently married the father of
her youngest child, but has
discovered that marriage comes with
a very real financial penalty when
one is on welfare.
Currently unemployed, she is
determined to overcome and find
work to support her family.
I've been on welfare practically
all my life, you know, growing up,
before I was born,
welfare existed in my family.
Angel is a single father of two
growing children.
He's a third generation welfare
recipient, suffered parental abuse
and lived a life of crime as a
young man.
With all that behind him now,
he still feels stuck in the system.
In prison they take you, and they
shave your head, they give you a
prison outfit; and they give
you a number.
And they tell you,
"Learn this number."
"This is who you are."
Richard is resetting his life after
20 years in prison.
Raised in poverty by drug-addicted
family members, Richard's life was
immersed in crime from an
early age.
He is now determined to turn
his life around.
All of these people search for
work and for happiness.
All of them face obstacles built
into the American welfare system.
Of all the books and articles I've
read on the welfare system and of
the importance of work for
happiness, none are more relevant
than those by Charles Murray.
Beginning with his landmark book
Losing Ground in 1984, Charles
continues to write about the
American welfare system.
Yeah...beautiful place.
Come on in.
Thank you.
A wise man wrote that the problem
with the welfare system is not what
it costs, but what it buys,
and I think that was you.
Well, it's a nice line.
Yes, it's much easier to say let's
give people money than let's give
people satisfying lives.
But you know what?
That should be - that should be the
goal of social policies.
Money's the easy part,
and so we- we go with that.
But this is something we often miss
when we- we're in politics- when we
talk about the welfare system-
because it's easy to target a
specific material level.
I think they're talking way too
much about money;
and they aren't talking enough
about human flourishing.
This is my reading of the
data as well.
When I've looked at life
satisfaction in Sweden,
you can see that income is
not the decisive factor.
On no level it's the
decisive factor.
We make a big mistake -
a huge mistake- if we expect
happiness to correlate directly on a
one-for-one basis with the amount
of money you're making.
Wasn't this the classic puzzle in
social psychology: why is it that
lottery winners aren't much more
happy than the rest of us?
Not only are lottery winners not
"more happy",
it is a really good way to ruin
your life, if your life is not
grounded in other things.
The happiest lottery winners
keep on working.
Has America's focus on material
prosperity for the poor actually
come at the expense of
human happiness?
This large granite building in
Washington D.C.
houses the United States
Department of the Treasury.
This is where the government
collects all the taxes, pays all
its bills and generally manages the
country's economy.
In fiscal year 2015, the federal
budget included $3.8 trillion in
expenditures; around $12,000
for every American man,
woman and child.
Around $1 trillion was spent on
approximately 86 different programs
making up what's called the
"welfare system."
Politicians and experts have
differed on the increases and
decreases in the level of poverty,
but all agree that tens of millions of
Americans are still considered "poor."
Chris lives in a small town in
northern Washington.
Originally from Kansas, Chris met
and married her husband after
graduating college.
They had four children while
running a construction business
together.
But life has been a challenge.
Her second child, Madrona, now
13-years-old, was born with
cerebral palsy, and 3 years ago,
Chris was diagnosed with cancer.
Is it a little too hot?
The money that we were using to
care for Madrona was running out.
Is your chair getting too hot?
Let's get out of there.
Yeah, the black gets pretty-
pretty warm.
That's when we turned for assistance.
And at the same time, that's when I
was diagnosed with breast cancer
and then six months later, the
kids' dad filed for divorce.
So...the domino effect of all of
those things...and now here I am
three years post all of that still
on public assistance and really
just now feeling like I'm getting
my bearings in terms of okay,
how will I transition out of this
place now?
Mommy, where's the keys?
The keys are over there.
Both of my parents were very
hard workers.
They had a value around work
integrity and providing for your
family...I want to support
my family independently,
have my own place
where I pay my own rent,
and I have work.
When you take work out of people's
lives, there's a hole that's
produced, obviously, but it's not
just a hole in their time.
Arthur Brooks, president of the
American Enterprise Institute,
writes and speaks extensively on
what he calls "earned success."
"526."
The real hole is created in their
sense of dignity, in the sense of
worth, in the sense of meaning.
People are created to create value.
Earned success is the concept that
you are creating value with your life.
And you're creating value in the
lives of other people.
Chris wants to work, but can she
afford to endanger her benefits?
How much I work generally will
decrease my benefits.
There's a certain amount where
I myself will lose Medicaid
insurance, which is important
because I have a history of cancer.
It's very complicated to figure out
what the sweet spot is.
The way the system works,
Chris would lose more benefits if
she worked an entry-level job than
she could compensate for with
earned income.
Generally, what I come up with is
if I want to support my family
independently, have my own place
where I pay my own rent, I have
work, you know, I need to go from
where I'm at now to around
$60,000 a year.
Hi Amber, how's it going?
How was the library?
Good.
When we're talking about how to fix
the welfare system, let's start
with the reality of how miserably
it's run: the amounts of time that
you have to spend dealing with the
welfare bureaucracy
if you're a recipient.
The complex rules which make it
next to impossible to understand
how you could get out of it!
I mean how many hours can I work
without losing my benefits?
What are the parameters?
Social scientist Isabel Sawhill is
a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution, and served in the
Clinton administration.
She has spent decades studying
welfare and its effects.
There's no question that there are
certain disincentives built into
our programs, so that if you earn
more money, that you're going to
lose some benefits.
You go to the office and you see
the population of people who are
working with this...
everyone just looks so worn out.
And I get it.
It just wears you down.
And I- You know, if I'm going to be
worn down, I'd like it to be
because I'm working, not because
I'm- you know- running around to
different appointments.
Chris receives assistance from 5
different programs, all run by
separate agencies: TANF, Medicaid,
Child Support, SSI and SNAP.
Each carries distinctive rules and
regulations, along with separate
paperwork, appointments, phone
calls and deadlines.
These rules are very complicated.
They're- they're tough.
And I do not blame a welfare
recipient who does not know
all the rules.
That doesn't even make sense.
See this is why I just want to be
off of the whole thing.
You know, and every time I go to my
case manager and I say that,
I say I need to transition off.
This is maddening.
I don't have time for this and you
know, and she really warns
me against it.
Mom?
Yes, ma'am?
Is it time for lunch?
It is time for lunch.
I was just putting my stuff away.
And the problem is that that leads
to people not working as much as
they'd like to, or as much as
they should.
So it's bad for families, it's bad
for children, it's bad for individuals.
Robert Doar is former commissioner
of New York City's Human
Resources Agency.
He has an inside perspective of why
he believes the welfare system is
broken, and what he considers might
be done to address the problems.
Whether it's childcare, or public
health insurance, or food stamp
benefits or tax credits, we run our
programs in this country through
all these different separate silos
of programs, and so for a recipient
of assistance, they're moving
around from one to the next, to the
next, and they don't really know-
or understand- why the rules
are different.
Whether or not Chris will succeed
depends largely on the policies
executed by the people who work in
this building.
Here at the Department of Health
and Human Services there are more
than 80,000 full time employees
administering the programs designed
to aid America's poor.
But despite this army of people,
and $1 trillion in resources, the
unintended consequences of those
programs can prevent the poor from
getting back on their feet.
One big problem is the "welfare cliff."
If we follow earnings as income
increases, food stamps, housing,
and TANF begin to bottom out,
leaving recipients in a worse
financial position.
Even if a recipient keeps working-
the cliffs continue as income
rises, making the jump to work
financially risky.
To make matters worse, it is
unclear exactly when benefits
are lost.
The rules change by state,
legislation, income, and
number of dependents.
In a welfare cliff situation,
each additional dollar of earnings,
each opportunity for a promotion,
each additional number of hours,
becomes a balancing act that a
welfare recipient has to decide.
Do I want that, or will I lose too
much in childcare assistance?
Or will I lose too much in public
health insurance coverage?
Or will I lose too much in cash
supplemental aid?
And that kind of dynamic is not
healthy; is not helpful.
You know a lot better welfare
system would be one that allowed
people to try to get out without
penalizing them.
She turned it off.
Sam, get up.
You turned off the alarm?
Like his mother and grandmother
before him, Angel is on welfare.
Why?
You've got to start getting up, Sam.
It's already past 7.
As a single father with two
children, he receives a variety of
state and federal government benefits.
Nat, start getting up, c'mon.
Usually a father would say I want
my son to grow up like me.
I want my son to grow up
like his father.
No.
Not at all...because the way I grew
up and the things I've done
in the past.
If you're going to school by
yourself, that's fine, if not,
I've got to walk Samantha.
No, it hurts me to say I don't want
him to grow up like me.
I want him to grow up and be his
own man.
I want him to be better than me.
All right...we ready?
Angel wants to work to support his
children, but if a minimum wage job
is the best he can get,
it may not be worth it.
It doesn't make sense to get a
minimum wage job.
You know?
Might as well stay on welfare.
Because having a minimum wage job,
it's like the same thing as being
on welfare.
It's little money.
Angel feels "stuck" in the system.
His long-term girlfriend, Steffani,
tries to help.
I've got to call the housing to
find out what's going on with the
transfer and everything.
Okay.
Yo, you got to go with me to the child
support to straighten this out.
They said you have to go down and
file for a modification and they
should stop it right away.
That's what they told me.
Every paper that I got on top of my
shelf right here is nothing but
bills and bad news.
There's no good news right there.
None...just bad thoughts
go through my mind.
(Woman on phone talking)
Angel Rodriguez, I'm calling from
Bronx, New York.
It's about helping people be as
self-sufficient and independent as
they want to be.
And unfortunately, our programs
right now are not encouraging that
sufficiently.
(Woman on phone talking)
No. T1.
T1, T as in Tom, yes T as in Tom,
I'm sorry.
Every time you go in for an
appointment, they should tell you
about jobs.
They should have listings on the
wall instead of listings like
"Do you need food stamps?
Do you need cash assistance?"
Things like that!
It's ridiculous.
No no...wait...okay well, um I was
speaking to someone like maybe no
more than five minutes ago and she
was helping me, but I forgot to
give her this account number.
I have found in going around the
country, and talking to low-income
recipients of forms of assistance.
They say they're good at giving me
assistance financially, but they
don't help me get a job.
Once I start working, welfare is
going to send me a letter saying
the same thing,
"We are going to cut you off."
But I gotta go to work, so I'm not
thinking about what welfare
thinks right now.
I'll worry about that later.
Hold on, hold on...
here, here...ask them.
They can't talk to me.
All right.
Can I have someone- can I have
someone speak for me, please?
Because this is just aggravating me,
I'm sorry.
Today in America we have a bottom
half of the population that
effectively has an economic growth
rate that's about zero.
We can't stand for that.
How much we get every 2
weeks from...?
You?
PA?
It's just, it's always a struggle.
It's always something else that we
can never catch up on.
Look around, we see that the poor
in this country are not having an
increasing standard of living.
We find that the bottom 20 percent
of the income distribution has
about a third less likelihood of
getting to the middle class or
above as it did in 1980.
Mobility's kind of stagnant in this
country and that's a big problem.
A life on public assistance has
greatly affected Angel's
relationship with Steffani, and he
doesn't want to drag her
down with him.
Once you poor,
there's no getting out of it!
I don't care!
There's no getting out of it.
Don't waste your time
being with me.
...why I tell you these
things man.
I don't want to drag you down,
don't you understand?
Listen. Stop.
You know, you're really intelligent.
You're beyond freaking smart man.
Being poor doesn't make you any
different of a person.
It doesn't!
Angel, it doesn't matter.
I could do it alone;
I could do it with you.
I could do it with anybody else.
Steff, the reality is you shouldn't
be with someone that's not really
doing much for themself.
Not that I'm lazy or anything
like that!
It's just I'm stuck; you don't want
to be stuck with me.
I'm not.
I'm helping you get unstuck!
It's just this life is
embarrassing; I don't like it.
Poverty produces stress and stress
takes a toll on relationships.
Inadvertently, welfare has
magnified the effects,
penalizing marriage and encouraging
single parenthood.
Charles Murray has strong feelings
about the impact of welfare
on the family.
Do you think it's fair to say that
welfare programs have undermined
the family as an institution by
discouraging marriage?
Absolutely, they've undermined
marriage as an institution...it has
contaminated, corrupted,
undermined, eroded the social
penalties and rewards that have
made communities function for
millennia.
We have had growing numbers of
single parent families in the U.S.
and they tend to be poor.
They are 4 or 5 times as likely to
be poor as a family that has
two parents.
But now, single parent families are
about a third of all families, and
still growing; we have a much more
costly and serious problem
on our hands.
Poverty is caused by a variety
of factors.
But there are ways to reduce the risk.
Poverty rate right now is about
15 percent of all Americans
being poor.
If you graduated from high school,
if you worked full time, and if you
didn't have children until you were
in a stable, two-parent family, the
poverty rate would fall to 2 percent.
The real problem with the welfare
system is that it provides
short-term incentives that are bad,
masking long-term outcomes,
which can destroy your life.
But they mask them pretty
effectively.
Monique has been on welfare
all her life.
She watched as her mother died of
AIDS and later had her first child
at age 16.
Just trying to find love in all the
wrong places and bumped into my
son's father.
...I was expecting to have a
family, and he was just looking for
somebody to just lay around with.
At the time, welfare seemed like a
solution to her problems.
When I first got on welfare, I did,
I felt like I was getting into a
Jacuzzi-RELAX-I was able to take
care of my son.
But then, you start, yeah...
you sink, everybody sinks.
You're 16-17-years-old...
you're pregnant.
You are going to get a pretty-
a reasonable cash income from your
point of view at that age of life.
You're going to get maybe a free
apartment, you're going to get food
stamps, you're going to have
healthcare for the baby,
all these things.
All of them make it easier to have
that baby...and not necessarily say
to the guy, step up to the plate
and take care of it.
As single parenthood rises,
increasing the rate of poverty in
America, the risks of single
motherhood and the importance of
marriage become critical.
If you and your romantic partner
are using condoms, at the end of a
5-year period, your chances of
getting pregnant are 63 percent.
The probability at the end of 5
years that you're going to get
pregnant using the pill is 38
percent.
Now, most people don't know that.
If you use a long-acting form of
contraception, and that means
either an IUD or an implant, then
your chances of getting pregnant
are around 2 percent at the end of
5 years.
Today, Monique and her children
live in public housing on
Staten Island in New York City.
Until recently, like so many others,
Monique was a single
mother on welfare.
All that changed when she
married Keith.
I got married because- to live as
God expected me to.
And I try to be honest with public
assistance and let them know that
we live together and we're married.
And we thought that adding him onto
the case would benefit us.
But we lost out.
The short-term incentive is you're
probably better off if you don't
get married.
Terrible long-term incentive...but a
perfectly understandable short-term
incentive.
I know it's hard to find a job
now-a-days.
Yeah it is.
How do you think your West
International interview went?
It went alright.
It went alright?
Yeah.
I hope you get it, too.
Keith used to get like almost $300
in food stamps, and I was getting
almost like $600 in food stamps.
Well, us together now, we're
getting like $400 and something odd
dollars in food stamps.
It looked like it was better when I
had my own case and you had your
own food stamp case because we
had more money coming in.
More help.
The way the system is set up is
you're better off single than you
are married on public assistance.
Well, the welfare system
discourages marriage in a
very simple way.
It combines the income of the two
people in the household.
So when they're married both of
their incomes count as eligibility
factors in determining whether
they're going to get assistance.
So the more income they have from
the combined sources, the less
benefits they are going to get.
That definitely sends a
disincentive to marriage.
And that's a troubling fact.
Throughout history, as nation after
nation has become prosperous, each
has developed programs designed to
help its poorest citizens at the
state's expense.
As early as 1889, Chancellor Otto
von Bismarck of Germany created an
old age pension for workers who
could no longer find employment.
Helping the poor it seems has
always been a government concern
and it's likely to remain so.
The very beginning of the welfare
system was the passage of the
Aid to Dependent Mothers early
in the New Deal.
And you know what?
It was perfectly reasonable.
What did they have in mind?
Francis Perkins was secretary of
labor at that time and she had in
mind widows- widows with small
children.
And they needed help!
What is a more natural object of
our affection?
When the stock market crashed in
1929, the world entered the
Great Depression.
After his election in 1932,
Franklin D. Roosevelt
instituted federal reforms
to help the poor, including
cash assistance for single mothers.
With 20 percent unemployment in
America, massive public works
projects strengthened families by
providing employment in a
difficult time.
"I pledge myself to a new deal for
the American people!"
Roads, public parks, dams and
bridges were built, tying work
directly to assistance.
But even President Roosevelt
realized that there was a limit to
what the government could do.
President Roosevelt certainly said
often that welfare was not intended
to be for a lifetime and not
intended to replace work.
And to the extent that we've gotten
away from that sentiment in some of
our programs, that's unfortunate.
"The lessons of history, confirmed
by the evidence immediately before
me, show conclusively that
continued dependence upon relief
induces a spiritual and moral
disintegration fundamentally
destructive to the national fiber.
To dole out relief in this way is
to administer a narcotic, a subtle
destroyer of the human spirit.
We must preserve not only the
bodies of the unemployed from
destitution but also their
self-respect, their self-reliance
and courage and determination."
It all started out so innocently.
And if I'd been alive then, I would
have been in favor of it then.
But it ratcheted up very slowly.
Even by the end of the 1950s,
the welfare rolls were small.
The amounts of money were small.
Welfare really was not, at that time,
an attractive way to try to live.
Roosevelt remained true to his
convictions, and phased out
emergency public projects as the
economy improved.
From the 1940s to the 1960s,
poverty fell dramatically
in the United States.
In 1964, the Great Society and
War on Poverty programs were
inaugurated in the United States
from President Lyndon Johnson.
"And this administration today here
and now declares unconditional war
on poverty in America."
The ideas were great.
I mean you listen to the early
speeches and it was soaring
rhetoric about the whole human
person, the dignity of people, and
not wanting people just to be on
the dole.
"Our aim is not only to relieve the
symptom of poverty, but to cure it,
and above all, to prevent it."
And great intentions.
But they weren't fulfilled.
The truth is that dependency grew
and grew fast.
More and more families were
multi-generations in poverty as a
result of these programs.
Johnson's War on Poverty was an
admirable attempt to deal with a
problem that had been kept in the
shadows for too long.
We really thought that it was
very simple.
And by "we" I mean me, too.
You have people who are unemployed:
have a jobs program.
That will take care of that.
You have schools in the inner
cities that are turning out kids
who don't know how to read and so
forth: pay teachers more, put more
resources into the school...you'll
get better results.
Where we failed is to make people
more self-sufficient.
I don't think we've done a very
good job there.
There are a whole bunch of things
that seemed like they would be easy
to do and within half a dozen years
it was quite obvious they were
really, really hard to do.
I mean there was so much poverty,
how do you solve that?
And the answer was- according to
many of those programs-
spread money around.
People don't have very much money,
and so you give them more money and
then they'll be able to flourish,
they'll be able to- to thrive more.
Well, that's not right.
Instead of ending poverty,
progress slowed,
and then it stopped altogether.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton
instituted work support and time
constraints, determined to get the
train back on the tracks.
"A long time ago I concluded that
the current welfare system
undermines the basic values of
work, responsibility, and family,
trapping generation after
generation in dependency and
hurting the very people it was
designed to help.
Today we have an historic
opportunity to make welfare
what it was meant to be:
a second chance, not a way of life."
Bill Clinton had the advantage of a
couple of decades of social science
that told him how hard it was to do
the things that L.B.J. had
thought he could do easily.
It was a bipartisan effort, but it
was controversial to be sure.
It said very clearly that there is
a two-way street here with
public assistance.
If you want our assistance, you
need to do something to show that
you're being responsible and moving
toward the workplace.
You didn't find a job; you get
kicked off the rolls.
It's what we call shift and shaft.
It shifts the problems to the state
and local levels but most of all it
shafts poor people and their
children.
The opposition to it was expressed
by the left in just those terms;
that it was going to be
"Calcutta on the Hudson."
When we did interviews with mothers
who'd been on welfare they said
they wanted to work.
It wasn't a right or an entitlement.
That was extremely important, and
what was the best part about that
act, was that people responded.
And sure enough- when we reformed
welfare and provided them with more
childcare and more wage subsidies
when they went to work-
they went to work in droves.
Applications for cash assistance
plummeted to record lows.
But other programs like the Earned
Income Tax Credit were expanded to
help off-set taxes for low-income
Americans.
We replaced the welfare program
with several other programs,
most importantly something called
the Earned Income Tax Credit-
which is a wage subsidy-
that you only get if you're working.
Today, it is lauded on both sides
of the aisle for promoting work and
therefore happiness.
Despite the success of the 1996
reforms and the best intentions of
Roosevelt, Johnson, and Clinton,
today's welfare programs remain a
labyrinth of individual agencies
with budgets rising every year.
It has almost endless rules.
If you earn too much at your job,
you lose benefits.
If you save money in the bank, you
lose benefits.
If you marry someone with income or
savings, you lose benefits.
In order to avoid penalties like
that, people improvise, and that
creates activity in what is known
as the underground economy.
You got my orange juice?
It's alright, c'mon let's go!
Sometimes I have to break the law
and cash food stamps.
Not for drugs, not for none of my
habits, but for my kids.
As the food stamp program has grown
it's become more and more
incapable of monitoring the proper
use of the benefit, which is a
voucher, it's supposed to buy food,
hopefully healthy food.
And instead, what's happened is
that people are using the E.B.T.
card to trade in order to receive
cash benefits at a discounted rate.
Let's just say I got $300 in food
stamps, I don't have no cash.
I'm gonna keep $200 in food stamps,
go to the super market and I'm
gonna take $100 in food stamps...
and turn it into cash.
Meaning- this is what welfare don't
understand.
Out every 10, the store will take
out $3 for themselves...and give
you the 7.
So add it up, out of 100 in food
stamps, you get 70 in cash.
Well, of course, it's understandable.
I'm a human being I understand
people in need who face
difficulties and make
difficult choices.
What I want is a government program
that is interested not just in
providing a voucher for food,
but is interested in helping that
family grow and prosper through
their own earnings and their own
labor and, unfortunately, the food
stamp program is insufficiently
interested in those things.
So I'll meet you at 2:20,
alright...okay?
I love you, sweetie.
Nobody's watching.
I don't like learning those tricks;
I don't like knowing those
things...I don't.
Welfare doesn't have no opportunity.
School, training, you know...
busting your behind to get a job,
that's more worth it; instead of
you being on welfare, which is
easy, but be stuck on it for years.
You don't want to bring kids into
the world and be struggling.
Who wants to be struggling
with kids?
What do you do?
Keep on striving...
and make a better life for the
kids, right?
A few years ago, unemployed and
living in the Bronx, Monique failed
to pay her electric bill;
her power was cut off.
And she turned to the only resource
available: the underground economy.
Let's go.
It's time to go.
My lights was out.
I had two little kids.
I remember my lights went out when
I was a kid.
I was left in the house by myself
in the dark.
And I refused to have my kids
living in the dark.
I had 12 hours to get that bill
paid for them to come out and turn
my lights on.
I did what I had to do as a woman,
as a mother, as a provider.
So I came up with a quick hustle,
found some drugs in my building,
and wind up about 2, 3 weeks later
I got arrested.
The officers was shocked, they did
my fingerprints, found out that
that was my first time offense...
I never did it again.
I wouldn't.
I'd rather come home with a
paycheck even if I got to wait a
whole week and do it, I would
rather come home with a paycheck.
Welfare policies have created
negative consequences.
One example is the way in which the
poor are penalized for good
behaviors like saving money.
Recipients have to spend down
savings and dispense with assets
in order to get help from the
government.
Your Social Security number goes
through a machine.
So let's just say, I wind up
throwing 2 or 3 thousand dollars
in the bank...
That'll ring up and welfare will
know that.
And RIGHT AWAY within two to three
weeks, you'll get a letter stating
that they're gonna cut you
off of welfare.
You know?
If you don't want to get cut off,
you take that money out- spend it
on whatever- and welfare will say
show us receipts.
You know, bring the receipts.
We've set up in our country a
situation where too many workers
are thinking about multiple ways to
avoid working on the books,
because they either don't want to
pay taxes or they don't want to
lose welfare benefits.
Both of those problems we
need to address.
But for people like Angel,
who can't put their savings in banks,
there is always the underground
economy.
The University of Wisconsin has
estimated that as much as
$2 trillion may go unreported every
year in the underground economy.
Some of those activities are
illegal, but a lot of the
underground activity is simply
extra-legal...even entrepreneurial.
For example: bartering, exchanging
services like car rides and
babysitting for food and
cleaning services.
It may be that the underground
economy creates space for
opportunities that would
otherwise not exist.
I'm Paris, I love sneakers!
My name is Raudi.
I'm actually out here camping out
as you can see for the new Jordans
coming out tomorrow.
I do it mostly to collect.
Like- I've been collecting sneakers
my whole life.
I had to at some point like almost 200
pair of sneakers.
It's a sneaker culture.
Like, we all a part of it.
Every weekend there's a new
sneaker that comes out.
So we try to get as many as we can.
If I sell all of them, hopefully,
I'll probably get enough to buy a
house or something.
Because they go up in value within
the year; especially if they're
brand new.
We do this basically for a living.
Like, I've been doing this for
almost like 6 years now.
Stores like Flight Club, Sneaker
Pawn, and conventions like Sneaker
Con provide opportunities to buy,
sell, and trade second-hand sneakers.
Chase Reed of Sneaker Pawn is well-
acquainted with a new
booming business.
So basically, we're a sneaker bank.
People can come to us and get money
instead of having to go to a bank
or having to go through
somebody else.
Because of the possible penalties
that come with a traditional bank
account, sneakers have become an
inventive way to save.
Buying sneakers is not throwing
money away, because it's an asset
just like everything; just like a house
would be, just like anything you-
anything you own is an asset.
The same way you trade baseball cards,
same way you buy baseball cards,
you sell 'em, same thing with sneakers.
If you up to do the swap,
I'll do the swap.
For which ones?
I don't know...I got those already.
If you get 10 sneakers a week for
$200 and you sell them for $300 and
you do that for 40 releases, you
get $40,000 and that's just off of
10 sneakers, so imagine if you get 20;
that would be $80,000,
if you get 30 sneakers that
would be $120,000, and so on.
That's not including the sneakers
that go for $2,000.
That's only sneakers
that cost $300.
Thanks a lot man, I appreciate it.
I think anybody in poverty,
there's a million ways to get out-
instead of going and sell drugs-
and sneakers are a big way to get out.
All right?
Good lookin' Chase, I'll see you later.
Definitely...alright?
I'll probably be back in a couple
days, bro.
Most agree the best solution to
welfare is a job, but instead,
poverty programs have spun out of
control and have proven difficult
to run effectively.
One program in New York City could
potentially serve as an example
for reform.
It's a simple, successful model for
transitioning the poor into work in
the private sector.
For these men, work matters and
it's not just about a paycheck.
Collectively walking 160 miles
every day in rain, sleet, snow, and heat;
they clear nearly 10,000 tons
of garbage from New York City
streets each year.
It's the first job they've had in a
long time and it's part of a
training program.
But for them, this dirty work is
far more than cleaning streets.
A bucket and broom have become the
first step on a path to a new life
in an organization called
Ready, Willing & Able.
Its Co-Founder is Harriet McDonald.
Our motto is: "Work Works."
And what we give people and believe
in is a hand up- not a hand out.
Everybody gives up entitlements
as soon as they get here.
This is about earning your way
to success.
Ready, Willing & Able is a
10-month program that begins with
one month cleaning New York City
streets, and culminates with a
career in the private sector.
How's everything?
How long you here now?
It is specifically designed to
transition men out of poverty,
homelessness and incarceration.
The program had an unlikely beginning.
I was actually a screenwriter
living in Beverly Hills.
And I was hired to write a
screenplay about a homeless little girl
who actually was a real person.
And I'm entering Grand Central,
which at that time,
there were thousands of
homeless people living there.
And off this bench pops up this
little girl, and that's April.
And she knew all the homeless
people because she had lived there
so long and she was only 17.
And she had the quality of a
wild bird in this great station.
Harriet became immersed in
April's world and the two formed
a strong bond.
And I thought, well, I'll go home;
I'll write this screenplay and it
will save her.
And about a week after I finish the
first draft, I got a call that she
had killed herself.
Fueled by April's death,
Harriet returned to New York,
where she married homeless advocate
George McDonald.
In 1985, they founded
Ready, Willing & Able.
At that time, everyone said that
they're too lazy; they're too
crazy, they don't want to work and
all that stuff.
Ready, Willing & Able's first
contract was to provide basic
maintenance for New York City's
homeless housing.
From the first day,
they out produced the contract.
That was their level of motivation,
and we knew then
that we had it right.
And since we've begun,
we've generated $750 million in revenue,
putting $250 million into the
pockets of the people who work so
hard in our program.
And our budget is $50 million a year
right now.
And we're growing!
Richard Norat was born into poverty
and introduced to drugs
at the age of eight.
Morning!
I had slept in cars;
I had slept in trains...rooftops;
I've eaten from garbage.
I wanted to die sometimes.
I mean I'd wake up in the mornings
and I was so dirty and smelly,
and I'd- I'd get on a train or a bus and
people would look at me in disgust.
And- and it would hurt because I
could see them looking at me.
I didn't even have to look at them,
and I could feel them looking at me,
and I wanted to explain to them,
I'm going through something
right now.
This isn't me.
You know...understand.
Richard was serving a 20-year
prison sentence when he found out
about Ready, Willing & Able.
When he was paroled, they were his
first and only option.
When I got here and
they accepted me...
it was cathartic.
A weight was lifted off my shoulders.
I got to eat...
I got to shower.
I slept in a great bed.
The energy here was so positive.
Everybody's building.
Everybody's calling me sir.
Nobody calls me sir.
So how long have you been
with us now?
Nineteen...nineteen months now.
I remember you saying to me once
that, "Do all you can while you're
here- because by the time you look-
it will all be over."
Yeah.
I mean...sometimes when you're
re-creating or reinventing yourself
it looks so far away.
But then when you get involved in
the actual work of it,
it goes quickly.
Well, I worked with
Ready, Willing & Able when I was
the commissioner of social services in
New York City.
And the program is a success
because it treats people as
individuals who have capabilities
and have assets; and can go to
work; and want to go to work.
Remember this about our program:
once- the morning that you come here,
YOU still have to do the work.
Yes.
YOU got up every morning.
YOU worked hard every day.
YOU stayed drug free.
YOU went to class at night.
YOU did everything necessary to
recreate yourself.
That's what makes us different.
That's fantastic.
You know?
That's real.
The most important thing we can
give people is economic opportunity.
They will do the rest, I promise.
These are guys that nobody wants to
deal with at all.
And yet, these are the people
that are involved in the
Ready, Willing & Able program.
They have astronomically high rates
of success in the job market, low
rates of re-incarceration, and high
rates of flourishing and happiness.
I was talking to a guy in New York
who had been in prison for
a long time.
He was working for an
exterminator company; it was the
first real job he'd had.
And I asked him, "Are you happy?"
And he said, "Let me show
you something."
He said, "Look at this email; it's
from my boss."
And the email said, "Emergency bed
bug job, East 65th Street, I need
you now." That's the first time in
my life anybody has ever said those
words to me."
That came through work.
I never thought I could ever
associate my name or my life
with a career.
Doctors have careers;
lawyers have careers,
I'm licensed in the State of New York.
Look at that sight...
that's a beautiful view.
I'm free.
I'm literally free.
Here, look right here...
the email's in there,
look for it...look for it.
It says it, right?
Yeah, it says "Your background
check has cleared and we are
excited to offer you a position..."
The value and joy of work is part
of our shared humanity.
When persistence meets opportunity,
it can lead to redemption.
I got a job working for
munchery.com; it's delivering,
like high-class food.
This job really changed me.
I love it...
this job, you know, its the best thing
that's ever happened to me.
Steve come get your coat.
Kayla come get your coat.
Yeah, grab your book bags.
Okay...who's first today?
Me!
Steve.
I'm second.
For me to earn my own success...
is a big deal.
The training I have coming up it's
a home health aide training.
It's an opportunity of a lifetime.
That's how I look at it.
Monique cannot wait to start work
as a home health aide.
When I put on my uniform (laughs),
I'm getting up at 5:00 in the morning!
I'm gonna be fully dressed;
I'm gonna be ready.
I've been waiting for this
opportunity for a long time.
Oh...you did it!
You did it!
Alright...go to your speak button.
Let's see how it sounds.
But for Chris things changed tragically.
Just months after filming,
her courageous daughter Madrona
passed away suddenly.
Moving forward with Madrona's
spirit of facing challenges,
Chris made new plans; she has relocated
to a nearby city to find work and a
better future for her girls.
We have learned there's hope in
seemingly hopeless cases.
To ensure more people have the best
chance at happiness,
we need to re-evaluate our policies
and perspectives.
The whole idea of "send us your
huddled masses," engraved on the
Statue of Liberty.
They didn't say, send us
your huddled masses, and we're going to
park them in public housing and give
them food stamps; and make sure that
they're out of sight to everybody.
No.
The problem that we have is not
just the mis-design of programs,
it's not that we're spending too
much; it's that we have
the wrong philosophy.
Poor people are not liabilities to manage;
they are assets to develop.
When we're talking about people who
are really struggling and facing
difficult times, the objective is
not to save more money;
the objective is to help more people
in the most effective way.
We need to rethink the welfare system,
not on the basis of how much
cash is going to whom,
but on the basis of how we can bring
earned success, and thus greater
flourishing, and happiness and...
better true welfare to the people
who need it the most.
Like so many prosperous countries,
America has built a huge and
well-meaning bureaucracy to care
for its poor and unfortunate.
In theory, the government can give
you anything, except that one thing
that gives you self-worth and the
respect of others: knowing that you
made this happen, that you
accomplished this yourself.
Until we revise this system,
something essential remains missing:
the independence and happiness
that comes from earned success...
from work.
THAT is the human cost of welfare.
Major funding for this program
has been provided by:
L.E. Phillips Family Foundation.
Chris and Melodie Rufer.
Additional funding was provided by:
Family Muhlenkamp Charitable Fund
of The Pittsburgh Foundation.
Harvey Cody.
For more infomation >> 🖤🖤200 SUBSCRİBE SPECİAL VİDEO!!! - BTS MOMENTS!!! 🖤🖤 - Duration: 3:54. 
For more infomation >> Test Video Clip - Duration: 3:30. 
For more infomation >> Bangla Waz New Short Video | আহলে হাদিসের মধ্য কিছু জাতীয়তা । মতিউর রহমান মাদানী - Duration: 1:57. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét