Work Incentive Quotes
He wanted to condition long term unemployment insurance payments on the recipient taking training courses or other means of improving his/her skills and becoming more employable. He was opposed on the left by those who observed that this was insurance; the working nothing from the government; the worker had paid for it when he/she was working. It was his and was not conditioned on government requirement. The right wing opposed the idea as they had always wanted the out of work people to have little or no other opportunity than to take the worst and lowest paying jobs in the society. They also pointed out that if training was to be provided, it would cost more and not less. But Gingrich and his supporters on this idea observed that there were many jobs available even with the high unemployment rate; the unemployed workers just did not have the skills to do these jobs. Train them and unemployment would go down. The investment in unemployment insurance and training would pay off many times over.
Nixon’s view was very popular, except the reality of the welfare system was much more complicated than most people thought. A very large percentage of the adults on welfare were women with young children. There was no practical way for them to work unless there was some mechanism for caring for the children. Most of these women could only earn minimum wage which was not enough to cover the cost of child care. Providing child care would then cost more welfare money for this investment and politicians, even those hating the welfare system as it was, would not make this investment which would have dubious payoff. Training the women for better paying jobs and covering their child care in the process, works but the investment is very large and gives the government even more control of American life so there has never been a consensus for this. In other cases, women could get work but not having an automobile, they could not get to jobs in most of the United states. Further, requiring welfare recipients to work, collapsed when the economy was in recession. Many women just could not find jobs, and even when the government provided assistance, the state of the local economy determined whether or not workfare was practical.
The result he predicted would be the fall of the Soviet Union {586210}.
