Philosophy : Workfare

Title	Philosophy : Workfare
# of Words	1618
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	6.47

Philosophy :     Workfare

"Society's Restraint to Social Reform"

     Of the many chatted words in the social reform vocabulary of Canadians today,
the term workfare seems to stimulate much debate and emotion.  Along with the
notions of self-sufficiency, employability enhancement, and work
disincentives, it is the concept of workfare that causes the most tension
between it's government and business supporters and it's anti-poverty and
social justice critics.  In actuality, workfare is a contraction of the
concept of "working for welfare" which basically refers to the requirement
that recipients perform unpaid work as a condition of receiving social
assistance.
     Recent debates on the subject of welfare are far from unique.  They are all
simply contemporary attempts to decide if we live in a just society or not.
This debate has been a major concern throughout history.  Similarly, the
provision of financial assistance to the able-bodied working-age poor has
always been controversial.
     On one side are those who articulate the feelings and views of the poor,
namely, the Permissive Position, who see them as victims of our society and
deserving of community support.  The problems of the poor range from personal
(abandonment or death of the family income earner) to the social (racial
prejudice in the job market) and economic (collapse in the market demand for
their often limited skills due to an economic recession or shift in
technology).  The Permissive View reveals that all participants in society are
deserving of the unconditional legal right to social security without any
relation to the individual's behaviour.  It is believed that any society which
can afford to supply the basic needs of life to every individual of that
society but does not, can be accused of imposing life-long deprivation or
death to those needy individuals.  The reason for the needy individual being
in that situation, whether they are willing to work, or their actions while
receiving support have almost no weight in their ability to acquire this
welfare support.  This view is presently not withheld in society, for if it
was, the stereotype of the 'Typical Welfare Recipient' would be unheard of.
     On the other side, the Individualists believe that generous aid to the poor
is a poisoned chalice that encourages the poor to pursue a life of poverty
opposing their own long-term interests as well of those of society in general.
Here, high values are placed on personal choice.  Each participant in society
is a responsible individual who is able to make his own decisions in order to
manipulate the progression of his own life.  In conjunction with this opinion,
if you are given the freedom to make these decisions, then surely you must
accept the consequences of those decisions.  An individual must also work part
of his time for others (by means of government taxing on earned income).
Those in society who support potential welfare recipients do not give out of
charity, but contrastingly are forced to do it when told by the Government.
Each person in society contains ownership of their own body and labour.
Therefore anything earned by this body and labour in our Free Market System is
deserved entirely by that individual.  Any means of deducting from these
earnings to support others is equivalent to criminal activity.  Potential
welfare recipients should only be supported by voluntary funding.  For this
side, welfare ultimately endangers society by weakening two of it's moral
foundations: that able-bodied adults should be engaged in some combination of
working, learning and child rearing; and secondly, that both parents should
assume all applicable responsibilities of raising their children.(5)
     In combination of the two previous views, the Puritan View basically involves
the idea that within a society which has the ability to sufficiently support
all of it's individuals, all participants in the society should have the legal
right to Government supplied welfare benefits.  However, the individual's
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