Current US welfare policy stigmatizes poverty as a pathology. This entrenches Paternalism and exclusion

The Paternalistic Argument for Work Requirements The paternalistic view of welfare and entitlements for the poor dominates the debates about welfare in the US and is embodied in current American welfare policy. It is characterized by its belief in the power of paid work to address what it views as the "pathology" of poverty. Its different strains vary as to whether they locate that "pathology" in the character of the poor, their environment, or in the system of benefits, incentives, and disincentives of the pre-PRWORA welfare system, but they share the emphasis on paid work as the way to address it. In the US, Lawrence Mead is the strongest advocate for conditioning welfare benefits on work, and one of those who advances an explicitly work centered notion of citizenship. Mead argues that the entitlement theory of citizenship?the one he claims was embedded in the pre-PRWORA welfare system?is harmful to the poor, and to the greater society. Without the discipline imposed by social obligations, he says, the poor cannot exercise the self-government that is the foundation of freedom (1986: 88-89). The social obligation that concerns Mead most is the obligation to work, at least in return for monetary benefits like welfare payments. Mead focuses his attention on work for three reasons. First, he believes steady work to be the best reliable means of escaping dependence on the government for subsistence, if not for escaping poverty itself (1992: 60). Second, he argues that sufficient work is available for the unskilled unemployed, who are able to reject undesirable low-wage jobs when benefits are not contingent on their acceptance (1986: 70-76, 1992: 12). Third, he believes that there is a national interest in enforcing low-wage work (1986: 153-154). Mead refers to work as a means to "integration" of the poor, and he means it in both a racial and a social sense. Mead suggests that the poor, especially poor blacks, have different values from the mainstream of American society. Enforced work requirements achieve physical integration by bringing poor blacks into contact with the working (white) majority, and cultural integration by enforcing dominant values (1986: 254-256). Mead's views on work requirements are filtered by his understanding of the ends of democratic government. While we privilege freedom in our political culture, he says, true freedom requires an underlying order and the government's willingness to be authoritative rather than permissive, where necessary; social policy is one means of achieving this order (1986: 6-7). Mead argues that a consensus around a "new paternalism" has emerged, and the American government no longer shies away from imposing paternalistic programs on welfare recipients, teenage mothers, drug abusers, the homeless, and other social "outsiders," nor from the need to inculcate among its citizens the values that used to be fostered by the family (1997, 1998, 1992: 181-184). While Mead's policy recommendations target poor and disadvantaged members of society, his political theory has a broader focus and purpose. His vision of democratic society as a unified, homogeneous, and disciplined citizenry working toward a common set of goals chosen, or at least ratified by the majority, puts him firmly in the conservative tradition of paternalism. His commitment to the integration of the mostly minority poor into mainstream society is bounded by his unwillingness to address the structural explanations for contemporary poverty in America, including racism, gender inequality, or the organization of the economy, or indeed to contemplate a genuinely pluralist vision of American society. What he advocates is a paternalistic integration, rather than an egalitarian one, with equal respect earned only by those who prove themselves through hard work and obedience to dominant norms. The paternalistic argument depends in large part on the idea of economic "independence." Mead endorses continued economic "dependence" on government benefits for those who work but are still poor, calling into question the value of the independence ostensibly conferred by paid employment (1992: 60). Furthermore, economic independence can be achieved through one's own efforts, the efforts of a spouse or partner, or the efforts of a forebear or other benefactor. Because this independence can derive from gifts or inheritance it bears no necessary relation to the character of the individual. In the case of marriage, this "independence" relies on the dependence of one spouse or partner on the other, shifting the locus of independence from the individual to the household, and the object of dependence from the community to an individual partner. Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, in their article "A Genealogy of 'Dependency'" (1997), trace the shifting connotations of the term from its description of the normal state of most of the pre-industrial population, through the revolutionary valorization of independence and its adoption by wage earners to distinguish themselves from dependent slaves, paupers, and women despite their own economic dependence on employers, to the rise of its current pejorative sense as an individual pathology rather than a structural social condition. Fraser and Gordon argue that "unreflective uses of this keyword serve to enshrine certain interpretations of social life as authoritative and to delegitimate or obscure others, generally to the advantage of dominant groups in society and to the disadvantage of subordinate ones" (1997: 123). This is clearly the case in the arguments of paternalists like Mead who, forced to acknowledge that even full-time work cannot guarantee a level of economic independence sufficient to obviate supplementation from the state, claims that some residual dependency on welfare benefits is allowed for those who play by society's rules by working for below subsistence wages. But how can we endorse economic indepen? dence as an essential quality of citizenship if it remains out of reach not only of those who choose not to work or who are unable to work but of some who work full-time? Work requirements for the poor do not lead to a genuine independence, but only to a form of ideologized independence that obscures their structural subordination in the contemporary economy. Furthermore paternalism, by valorizing the ideologized independence of the wage earner, gives insufficient consideration not only to alternative lifestyles that fall outside of society's dominant norms, but to important ways of life that fall within them. It is not only the poor single parent, deemed deviant from the norm by the lack of a partner, who suffers in comparison to the "independent" wage earner, but also the married parent who withdraws from paid employment to care for children and depends economically on her or his spouse. The caregiving spouse's "independence" is even more tenuous than the wage earner's, dependent both on the wage earner's employer and the wage earner's affections (see Moller Okin 1989: 134-169). The paternalist model fails adequately to address either of these important dependencies or to reconcile them to the ideal of independence it seeks to advance.