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Welfare In The United States Essay

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Welfare in the United States is a federal government program that was set up to help the unemployed or assist the underemployed. The welfare system takes money from the working people in the form of taxes and then distributes it to assist the underprivileged. Since this program has been put into place it has done nothing but put a burden on the taxpayers. People who depend on welfare quickly lose the incentive to work. Though this program has good intentions, in many aspects, it is misused and abused by many receiving it.

In 2012, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. population, or 52.2 million people, received some kind of means of public assistance every month. The government has made applying for welfare easy, perhaps too easy. This is why millions of Americans receive welfare. No one would rather go out and work a minimum-wage paying job when they can sit at home and get paid the same, if not more, with putting no effort forward at all. This type of misuse encourages many others, who do not need welfare, to apply for it because the stipulations to receive assistance are so minimal. There has been a lot of talk about reforming welfare, but no actions are being carried …show more content…
Nine percent of the welfare payments made, or 59.6 billion dollars, was the estimated amount of fraud in the fiscal year of 2014. That means that 59.6 billion dollars of the American people's’ hard earned money went to people who were not deserving of it. The prominent misuse of welfare takes away from the people who actually need it. There have been several stories where someone has lost their job and applied for assistance and was denied. They were practically made to sale everything they had worked their entire life for to finally become eligible for government

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