Welfare States Essay

Submitted By pinkurple7
Words: 558
Pages: 3

Welfare States
Americans do not like welfare programs as much as European and Canadian nations for several reasons. Martin Gilens’s book, “Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy” describes the reasons behind race and media. Americans assume that welfare recipients are undeserved poor individuals and welfare program only encourages them to not look for employments.
While some welfare states are those states which fund the program by collecting taxes from their nations, others fund the welfare program from their oil profits.
Most European countries offer welfare benefits to their nations and fund it through high taxes that people have to pay. However, in Middle East, countries with rich oil supplies finance their welfare programs with oil revenues.
Welfare states offer financial and economical protection and promotion to their citizens. These states believe that the state or government should play an active role in helping the citizens to have equal opportunities.
A welfare state is a concept that believes in distribution of wealth among the nations and public responsibility for those unable to reach to the same level of a good life standard as others.
Welfare states offer benefits to their nations in forms of healthcare, education and direct funds. The benefits are funded through taxation from the people.
Oil countries such as Saudi Arabia are great examples of welfare states exclusively for their citizens, and foreigners are excluded from these benefits.
United States offers some benefit for eligible individuals in forms of food stamps, housing subsidies and others. Other benefits which are called entitlements include social security and Medicare and supposedly include everybody at certain age.
Nevertheless, there are negative feelings about welfare in United States that are related to Americans’ perceptions of helping poor in the form of welfare program.
Based on Martin Gilens’ book, “Why Americans Hate Welfare”, these perceptions come from the media that has depicted African-Americans as the primary recipients of the welfare program.
Conversely, there are other racial groups and ethnics originally from other countries such as South America or even overseas who use the welfare