On June 30th, 2008, New York’s welfare rolls plummeted to their lowest tally in 45 YEARS!
When Rudy Giuliani took office there were over ONE MILLION people on New York City’s welfare rolls (1,160,593), today there are under 400,000 (341,329)!
Yes, workfare helped some people get back to work, BUT what welfare reform (including workfare) really did was to eradicate the massive FRAUD and abuse that had plagued that system rooted in a failed 1960s ideology that “work is wage slavery, and we should seek to free poor people from the shackles of employment and employer abuse.”
Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, who studies these kinds of policies, attributes all the gains made to Giuliani’s welfare reform, instituted back in 1995. "I think it's very much a product of the change in welfare philosophy that Mayor Giuliani introduced in '95," MacDonald said.
The savings to New York, at a time when tax revenues are falling due to the volatility on Wall Street, cannot be overstated. Given that the average welfare recipient in New York City costs the city at least $30,000/year, those 820,000 fewer recipients means the city is saving (at minimum) a staggering $2.4 BILLION/year! That’s got to be GREAT news for a cash strapped city like New York.
And the welfare rolls are perhaps the very best indicator of individual poverty that we have. Despite rising unemployment (the current rate has still not risen above 5%) and with many people leaving the workforce to work for themselves, the welfare rolls have, not only, not grown, they’ve continued to fall, indicating that actual individual poverty continues to fall, as well.
And that’s good news all around. No one should be mired in the generational dependancy that welfare progrmas breed, as that is the closest thing to a living death.
When Rudy Giuliani took office there were over ONE MILLION people on New York City’s welfare rolls (1,160,593), today there are under 400,000 (341,329)!
Yes, workfare helped some people get back to work, BUT what welfare reform (including workfare) really did was to eradicate the massive FRAUD and abuse that had plagued that system rooted in a failed 1960s ideology that “work is wage slavery, and we should seek to free poor people from the shackles of employment and employer abuse.”
Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, who studies these kinds of policies, attributes all the gains made to Giuliani’s welfare reform, instituted back in 1995. "I think it's very much a product of the change in welfare philosophy that Mayor Giuliani introduced in '95," MacDonald said.
The savings to New York, at a time when tax revenues are falling due to the volatility on Wall Street, cannot be overstated. Given that the average welfare recipient in New York City costs the city at least $30,000/year, those 820,000 fewer recipients means the city is saving (at minimum) a staggering $2.4 BILLION/year! That’s got to be GREAT news for a cash strapped city like New York.
And the welfare rolls are perhaps the very best indicator of individual poverty that we have. Despite rising unemployment (the current rate has still not risen above 5%) and with many people leaving the workforce to work for themselves, the welfare rolls have, not only, not grown, they’ve continued to fall, indicating that actual individual poverty continues to fall, as well.
And that’s good news all around. No one should be mired in the generational dependancy that welfare progrmas breed, as that is the closest thing to a living death.
