Welfare - a Good Will That Should Be Restricted

Samuel LaGoy

BA 302 Business Ethics

James Belanger

17 June 2011

Welfare: A Good Will That Must Be Restricted To Those Who Truly Need It

In order to formulate an opinion on who should be entitled to receive welfare benefits and what the guidelines should be, we first need to understand the true meaning of welfare and what it includes. Welfare is defined in the Webster’s Dictionary as “the state of doing well especially in respect to good fortune, happiness, well-being, or prosperity <must look out for your own welfare>”; which is interesting since somehow over the last few decades the meaning has somehow been reversed to the poor, unfortunate, and recipients of financial aid. More recently (I was unable to find an exact date) the Webster dictionary added a second definition: “a : aid in the form of money or necessities for those in need b : an agency or program through which such aid is distributed.” This is the more common use of the term recently and possibly a much better descriptive title would be government assistance, which is what most American’s think of when they think of welfare; honestly you can see where the name came from since the goal of welfare or government assistance is to bring the poverty and extreme poverty levels into a state of welfare.

The word welfare typically ignites a spark of resentment among the hard working individuals who pay taxes and watch as their tax money is spent inefficiently (as all government spending is) and watch as apparent able-bodied people sit around their paid-for houses “living the easy life.” Anger is certainly sparked when one mentions immigrants moving to the State and immediately drawing welfare benefits all while taxes continue to rise for the working class and our state and country continue to struggle with insufficient funds. Continuing to fuel this fire is the fact that the United States government is increasing spending on welfare faster than other budget and welfare spending now exceeds spending...