BARBED WIRE AROUND MERCY

AN OPEN LETTER TO FINDING LOVE
The Moral Fiction at the Heart of American Welfare
Personal Story by Dr. Todd Brown

In America, “welfare” is a dirty word.

When COVID hit, the country didn’t just wobble, it totally face-planted. Businesses shuttered, jobs vanished, and unemployment filings exploded to numbers we hadn’t seen since bread lines were part of the cultural wallpaper. In one week in March 2020, almost three and a half million people filed for unemployment insurance.

And then something happened that should, I repeat, should have changed us. The federal government responded with boldness that many pretend doesn’t exist anymore. Unemployment benefits were expanded, and for a stretch, unemployed workers received an extra $600 a week on top of regular benefits, which nearly tripled the average payout.

This relief came in the form of stimulus checks, rental assistance, and an expanded Child Tax Credit. The result was not the moral apocalypse people love to predict. Poverty didn’t rise during the worst economic downturn in nearly a century.

It fell.

By a lot: roughly 16 million fewer Americans were in poverty in 2021 than in 2018, and child poverty was cut by more than half. You’d think we’d throw a parade. Instead, we got a national eye-roll.

A loud faction of America looked at a historic reduction in suffering and decided the real emergency was that someone, somewhere, might be getting help they didn’t “deserve.” Politicians jumped on the same disproven narrative that aid makes people lazy. We even had a congressman posting photo of a closed fast-food restaurant like it was proof of moral decay. Another leader claimed unemployment insurance had “demonized work.”

The problem was the story was wrong. When twenty-five states cut back emergency benefits in summer 2021, it was a natural experiment. If the benefits were the reason people weren’t working, those states should have seen a noticeable employment surge. But they didn’t. The data came back like a flatline. No jump, basically a tie across states. Not only that, but states that cut benefits mainly achieved one thing, lower consumer spending, which slowed local economies.

So why did we want the lazy story? Because we’ve been trained to suspect the poor as villains. We judge reflexively, emotionally, and without evidence. And because calling someone else’s help “welfare” makes it easier to pretend our help is something nobler that is earned and pure.

But the evidence-based facts show that poor Americans aren’t “addicted” to welfare. If anything, they’re blocked from it. Or shamed out of it. Or exhausted by it.

Interestingly, statistics show how much money is left unclaimed every year by people who qualify for assistance and it’s staggering. About 7 million eligible workers don’t claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, food assistance, government health insurance, unemployment insurance, and SSI to the tune of nearly $142 billion in unused aid. This money designed to reduce suffering, just sits there like an unlocked lifeboat nobody can reach.

And because this keeps happening, an entire subfield of behavioral science has formed just to boost “take-up rates” to figure out how to get people to claim what they’re entitled to.  That’s not “dependency.” That’s a system with barbed wire around mercy.
​While all that is happening, those with insulation, paperwork skills, and a little breathing room are swimming in welfare so deep we don’t even feel wet. How you ask? In 2020, the federal government spent more than $193 billion on homeowner subsidies (far more than the $53 billion it spent on direct housing assistance for low-income families.

Think about that for a moment. The “welfare” we scream about is a sliver. The welfare we quietly enjoy is a banquet. We call a public housing tower “government subsidized” because you can see it. We do not call a mortgaged suburban home “government subsidized” even though it’s subsidized too, through things like the mortgage interest deduction, claimed for decades.  One looks like welfare. The other looks like normal life.

This is what it means when America’s welfare state is described as lopsided. If you count everything, retirement benefits, student loans, tax-advantaged savings, child tax credits, homeowner subsidies, our welfare state looks enormous. But if you strip out the tax breaks that disproportionately benefit people above the poverty line, our investment in poverty reduction shrinks fast.

And here’s the kicker: almost everyone relies on government programs at some point. One scholar estimates 96% of American adults have relied on a major government program.  The support is everywhere. Student loans guaranteed by the government, 529 plans with tax benefits, employer-sponsored health insurance that’s exempted from taxable income (a benefit estimated at $316 billion in 2022, projected to exceed $600 billion by 2032).
     
And in 2021, the U.S. spent $1.8 trillion on tax breaks. That’s welfare. We just don’t say it, because it makes us uncomfortable to admit we’re not rugged individualists. We’re participants in a society that constantly transfers value. The only question is: who gets transferred what, and who gets shamed for it?

We have to recognize this psychological trap. People who rely on the most visible programs (food assistance, public housing) are more likely to recognize government as a force for good, while those benefiting from the most invisible programs (tax breaks) are least likely to see government’s role in their success. The groups benefiting most (often affluent households with professional help), can hold the strongest antigovernment attitudes, mobilizing to cut “spending” while protecting their own benefits.

So if you’re looking for a horror story, one grounded in reality, it’s that a nation discovers it can cut poverty dramatically, almost overnight, through direct help. Then, instead of expanding that victory, it panics, because help threatens the myth that suffering is always earned.

The monster isn’t welfare.

The monster is the selective visibility of welfare. It’s the way we mark the poor as “takers” while quietly cashing our own checks in the form of deductions, exclusions, and subsidies. We’re not divided into makers and takers. We’re divided into people whose assistance is labeled “welfare,” and people whose assistance is labeled “normal.”

That’s not policy. That’s a haunting. ∎
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DR. TODD BROWN
Founder of the Inspire Project & Co-Founder of Operation Outbreak
www.awarenowmedia.com/todd-brown