At
around $700 billion a year, federal spending on welfare programs such as housing
assistance, food stamps, and disability payments is bigger than the country's
military budget.
Yet for all the money—and good intentions—spent on
welfare, it routinely leaves recipients with meager prospects for improving
their situation. Worst of all, because the system is so poorly designed,
beneficiaries routinely turn down job opportunities that will cut their
benefits.
That's the message of the richly researched new book, The Human
Cost of Welfare: How the System Hurts the People It's Supposed to Help, by Phil
Harvey and Lisa Conyers. The authors interviewed hundreds of welfare recipients
all over the country to provide an inside view of how welfare actually works and
how people navigate an endlessly complex and contradictory set of programs.
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