The Welfare Trap
Gilder, George
The Welfare Trap by George Gilder Bev’s weaknesses as a mother were understandable. She was 14 years old. Perhaps at age 14 a girl brought up as Beverly was lacks thematuritytoraisea small...
...They were left a substantial amount of spending money after Sam got a raise and stopped paying Betty...
...In 1973, Bev was too young to have the welfare option...
...So, two weeks later, Bev left for the West, investing $90 from her $ I65 check in a bus ticket...
...Before two weeks passed, Bev packed up again and headed back toward the East and Sam, another dream dissolved, another way out closed...
...But the momentum of her head against his fist broke her jaw and two front teeth...
...They spent much time trying to borrow money from Beverly...
...In the line of glum applicants, she even managed to smile at the red “be cheerfull’cards and yellow “smile” faces on the wall...
...Why work at ajob that would not increase at all themoney availableto his childrenthat merely would displace ADC and make some district attorney look artificially tough...
...The Albany M a l l , a monumental complex of state office buildings, was nearing completion, mortgage interest rates were soaring, and the national economy entered a serious slump, in which housing starts plummeted...
...In all this spending, Beverly was in control...
...As welfare rolls exploded under the welfare-rights and poverty programs of the 1960s, the illegitimacy rate for first or welfare-ticket births to teenage blacks rose to nearly 60 per cent...
...The indignation is at “cheats” and “frauds,” but the crackdowns are normally against new applicants in emergencies-defeated men without work or a woman, or women newly arrived from the South-or persons linked by marriage to a wage-earner, whether present or not...
...After a minute, she reached out a hand toward him, and they clung to one another, shaking quietly for a long time...
...Sam temporized for a while and then, in Apri1,joined his friend Phil at a blacktopping company...
...With Lissa sleeping on the floor between the seats in back in a heavy overcoat, and Bev herself warmed by hopes for success in the Sunbelt, she rode for three days and nights-from Cleveland to Chicago, through Nebraska to Salt Lake City, and finally to Silma, Utah, asmalltown in the desert well over a hundred miles from Las Vegas...
...People on Clinton Avenue told her he had been drinking and gambling heavily on borrowed money and was living with his mother...
...Though she fed him and bought himclothes-socks and underwear-she rarely gave him morethan$5atatime...
...Shefelt hewould spend it on beer and gambling and she knew that Sam, with several dollars worth of beer in him, after a series of losing rolls of the dice, was a dangerous and unpleasant person to have around...
...One day she found him at Dinty’s, having lost about $20of his own money, drunk and surly, and persisting in the game on borrowed quarters, and she grabbed him by the arm to try to take him home...
...Ain’t nobody...
...Most of the time the welfare system pays little attention to the names of the absent fathers of children supported and in part induced by welfare...
...She mentioned that she might even go visit her mother in Utah, wherejobs, she had heard, were plentiful for young women and where she could leave Lissa with her mother...
...Surrounded by friends that morning, Beverly, in her frilly white blouse witha peek-a-boo ddcolletage and her pink slacks luminous under the fluorescent tubes, was experiencing none of the humiliation of welfare...
...She resolved that when she went on welfare she would leave him...
...Hedid greet her warmly, though, making her feel still more at home...
...Toward the end, in fact, he even received a full dollar’s increase in his hourly wage...
...Hey, 1 thought you were in jai1,”she greeted him...
...Just maybe ’til the welfare man comes by,” she said quickly...
...Publishers...
...This article is adapted froin his book...
...You ugly dumbnigger,”she said, causing the group around him to laugh uproariously...
...His friend Red told him ofajobfor$2.50an hour at Concord Lumber Company...
...I din’t mean I don’t love you, Sam...
...Sam took it...
...In any case, if he stayed in the back room and kept the television on at all times to conceal voices, he felt safe enough...
...She also began to entertain the idea of liberation...
...Toward the end of the year, his take-home pay rose to $1 18 ($3.50 an hour...
...Well, I just want to be alone,” she said...
...Then she saw her old favorite foster parent, Steve Rabelli, a pleasantly sleek security guard with a thin black mustache, who worked at the welfare office...
...Girls underage 16 are not eligible for funds as mothers under Aid for Families with Dependent Children (ADC or AFDC...
...They could afford to live from day to day, because soon enough at age 16, Beverly would come into money...
...The Welfare Trap by George Gilder Bev’s weaknesses as a mother were understandable...
...Once on ADC, a woman quickly learns not to complicate her s t a t u s ; t h a t only means more paperwork and more chances to be kicked off the welfare rollsduringthose periods when the politicians decide to “crack down” and “tighten up” in their inevitably capricious and unpredictable way...
...She burst into loud sobs...
...A year’s income at the minimum wage, in fact, was worth about $1,500 less aftertaxes than welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid for a mother and child...
...She got back in time to pick up her next welfare check, but the landlord had chained off theapartment and Sam was gone...
...It was a dangerous life because without money the currency of the streets is ingenuity, violence, and sex...
...But $20 would get her $42 worth of food stamps which could be used virtually as cash at most stores...
...The apartment cost $165 a month, and though Sam was irked at having to crowd into the closet with all his obvious belongings whenever the landlord or welfare investigator knocked on the door, he and Bev now had more money between them than ever before...
...Bev’s mother had said she was really set up well with Bob in Utah...
...Sam’s a good father, too...
...Bev noticed that Bob seemed cruder than usual and her mother had lost her looks completely...
...Then he tossed her down on the bed and kicked a beer can across the room...
...Although she didn’t press charges and Sam felt doubly humiliated and apologetic, she decided then and there to leave him...
...but they’ve beengivin’mea lot of shit...
...They were the best times despite the lack of any place they could call their own, despite the frequent pressures of a difficult child in diapers, despite an income and benefit level far below what welfare would bring them later...
...Perhaps at age 14 a girl brought up as Beverly was lacks thematuritytoraisea small child...
...I just want to get away, that’s all...
...He didn’t mean to hit her hard, he swears now, and she agrees...
...Sam tried it once and immediately decided that he was better off as an unlisted welfare recipient: one of the hundreds of thousands of men who feed off the welfare system without joining it-by feeding off welfare mothers without marrying them...
...Visible Man: A True Story of Post-Racist America, Basic Books, lnc...
...Shesounded concerned...
...And it’s only a hundred miles from Las Vegas,” Bev said, “00la la...
...Dreaming About Vegas Altogether the process took about three hours, until noon, when the three girls left to get a lunch of fish and chips at a fast food restaurant in a nearby savings bank building...
...Then he lay down beside her, looking dully at the ceiling...
...Doing Well on Welfare A few days later, they moved together to 98 Columbia Street, a handsome gray stone building on a steep hill next to the County Courthouse...
...Tell me who the fuck it is...
...You get some money and you just think youcan move out...
...This amount was inadequate to buy food and rent, and beer and television, for a family of three in Albany in 1973...
...Honest...
...They often went to the movies with Phil and Sandra, rarely missing a Kung Fu or karate film, a genre that Beverly enjoyed about as much as Sam...
...In the Welfare Line But to Sam anything seemed better than the humiliation of standing in a line with the expectant women and wearied beaten men at the Office of Social Services in order to win the privilege of emptying clean ashtrays at PAD (the Parents Against Drugs center...
...Early that evening, she heard he had been arrested and jailed for failure to make child support payments to Betty...
...It was the only timeshecould remember Sam getting so violent without being drunk...
...You just let me worry ’bout those mothers,” he said...
...In Child Services, she met more of her friends from the old days, when shewas the recipient child...
...Then, on July 26, the day before her birthday, Sam went off to work anddid not come back...
...Sam spoke with a note of apprehension...
...Being under 16, however, Bev needed a man who could support her while Sam’s and her daughter, Melissa, was a baby...
...A man on the way out has to find another woman quickly, elbow another man aside, that very night ifpossible, to get food and lodging...
...There was no work and far less welfare...
...They are really ADC’s babies...
...Concord simply went out of business due to a recession in housing...
...No trouble...
...But as her birthday approached, she also began to see ADC in other ways...
...Sam stood up angrily...
...Her problem was government policy...
...1’11 give you somethin’ to talk about ’less you tell me who it is...
...1978 by George Gilder...
...Who the hell is it...
...In the early months of Melissa’s life, Sam was getting only the $62 a week from Concord Lumber to bring home to Bev...
...Welfare will pay for it-give us moving expenses, won’t they...
...Sam found himself back at Columbia Street watching television in the afternoons...
...In time, she thought, she might be able to get rid of Sam altogether...
...So they create a further disincentive to both work and marriage...
...Penalizing Work The worst thing he could do, for both of them, would be to commit himself to a mediocre career and marry Beverly...
...Almost half the applicants weremen, I mostly middle-aged and seemingly hung over, many uncombed and unshaven, in several layers of soiled clothes, seeking entry into the work relief category...
...She told her friends, over a pile of french fries and catsup, that she didn’t expect to stay with him much longer...
...in Bev’s case, Sam on unemployment, promising to go to work at $3 an hour for afew months when it ran out...
...There they lived during the suspenseful days as Beverly’s 16th birthday approached...
...He grabbed her by the throat and Bev realized that she was in danger...
...Their free housing arrangements, sponged from parents and friends, did save them rent...
...It happened that suddenly...
...Of course, as Bev well knew, welfare is only one of many programs that penalize work...
...After about three weeks at Columbia Street, Sam lost his job at the lumber company...
...That left them about $120 a month for clothes, utensils, and entertainment...
...What you mean alone with Lissa for awhile...
...So, of course, soon enough, he would...
...During 1973, they spent some oftheir time with Sam’s, mother, some with friends of Sam along Clinton, some with Phil and his girlfriend, Sandra, ina basement, and some at $5 a night in a small rooming house...
...In justifying these suits, the newspapers normally evoke images of wealthy stockbrokers abandoning their wives and children and forcing them onto the welfare rolls...
...They wanted to know all about Melissa and beamed warmly when Bev bubbledonabout the baby’s smile, her first upright steps, her light caramel complexion, her 25 pretty pounds...
...Yep,” she said...
...This form of welfare for the childless, which at best pays less than half ADC’s amounts, requires its recipients to work about 40 hours a month, usually sweeping floors or emptying ashtrays, whetherthey need it or not, at one of the city’s social service or community action centers...
...Both of them looked forward eagerly to the day...
...She opened her mouth in a soundless scream...
...The applicant lists the fathers if she knows them, but only rarely does the government actually investigate...
...Of course, Bev could not get these benefits unless Sam left his job and pretended to leave her apartment...
...To Bev, welfare also meant a bigger apartment in a better part oftown...
...I been thinkin’ of maybe movin’ out,” she said...
...Nah,” he said...
...Yeah, we should get out of here now,” Sam replied...
...Then she went to the housing unit, whereshe was given a form for a landlord to fill out andalist ofthephonenumbersof23 landlords who were known to welcome tenants on public assistance...
...1 might be able to get something better anyway...
...went tosupport Michelle, his child from an earlier liaison...
...The crackdowns rarely affect men like Sam who exploit welfare mothers already fully qualified...
...For a year, he operated a fork lift (illegally, for he lacked a license), unloaded freight cars, and delivered lumber and other wooden building materials to Albany addresses by truck, using a series of temporary driver’s permits...
...He would not necessarily leave his job, he thought, but he would damn well do it on his own terms...
...Then Beverly came back...
...That’s good,” he said, “cause I’m thinkin’ of not goin’ to Concord to mo rr o w . ” “I think you should keepgoing, Sam, you should keep workin...
...Well, you should do something,” Bev said earnestly, in a way that alerted him to trouble...
...Ain’t nobody else...
...Beverly’s chiefproblem was not her biological age, nor even her psychological condition...
...All I could ask,”she added, oblivious to her contrary statements downstairs...
...Even though Sam was not earning any money-except for an odd job on the side-they did well financially on Columbia Street...
...You got plenty of money...
...Yeah...
...If she had money, she would go out with other guys, as Sam, she suspected, was already sometimes philandering...
...As was clear to most women on Clinton Avenue in the Albany, New Yorkghetto, amanwitha job anywhere near the minimum wage cannot begin to compete with welfarein providing for children...
...Tell me,” he yelled furiously, shaking her against the chair, “tell me...
...For Sam, it would mean their moving into a large apartment, off Clinton Avenue, and it would mean a kind of liberation...
...You get on welfare all right...
...ADC Babies In Betty’s belated court actions to enforce child support, Sam had encountered one of the most perverse aspects of welfare crackdowns...
...Bev was very pleased, despite her stilltender jaw, to hear that he missed her badly...
...Therefore, if they want to keep their children, they must rely on men with jobs-normally young men, with mediocrejobs...
...In October, blacktopping and other construction jobs expired, and Bev persuaded Sam to get new work...
...This was the only year after Sam met Bev, therefore, that he spent working daily...
...But his child support payments jumped to $25, leaving him $93 on those rare occasions he bothered to pay the new amount to Michelle’s mother, Betty...
...1 didn’t like it, but he was boss,”she said...
...It was a time when you had to be rich to afford a new house, and new “middle income” housing projects were charging $400 a month for threeroom apartments...
...She left Melissa with a neighbor,and went offto pick up Sandra and Gloria for the expedition to the County Office of Social Services...
...children who were in...
...But this time they investigated Sam, found him to be guilty of receiving a legal wage, hauled him into family court, and made him pay the $15 a week...
...It was not because of anything he did, though his work and attendance had become more fitful as time passed...
...A Fight With Sam That afternoon, after a session in family court at which his child support payment was raised to $25 a week, Sam went to 871 Clinton Avenue to await Bev’s return from welfare...
...Except for an occasional dash to the closet or window with an armful of clothes, he was exempt from crackdowns and investigations, free from the need to lie endlessly to social workers about outside income, free from all the little emasculations that the system chooses to inflict on its male recipients whenever public indignation at welfare rises...
...money that would not be taxed, or stop at Dinty’s bar on the way home, or be siphoned off for the welfare-ticket kids of old girl friends...
...Where you moveto, 1 move,”hesaid firmly, settling the matter...
...The more usual case involves a young man, never married, who scarcely knows the welfare-ticket children whom some woman is assigning to him, sometimes by guesswork, on a welfare questionnaire...
...A Dangerous Life Normally a l a t e sleeper, who sheepishly tells friends not to call on her before noon, on July 27, 1974, Beverly awoke early, scrubbed clean, and dressed in her best clothes...
...And I always had pretty teeth,” she says now...
...Maybe . . . but I’d like to be alone with Lissa for awhile,”she said...
...This left $62 to bring back to Beverly...
...She found her mother and her boyfriend, Bob, living for $18 a week in a cramped motel room, with no air conditioning and a fitful shower, across the street fromajunkyard called Ernie’s where Bob worked dismantling automobiles...
...Finally Bev said, “I didn’t mean nothin...
...Get away from you yellin’ and hittin’ me...
...1 loveyou...
...The hell you say...
...Beverly needed his money then...
...Why you so hot on me workin’ anyway, if you’re on welfare...
...Then Bev would lose most of her welfare, and by her legal tie to Sam complicate greatly her future status with ADC...
...Whether or not she enjoyed his bossing, she also says that “those were the best times for Sam and me...
...many cases conceived by their mothers in an atmosphere of economic safety created by ADC...
...Sam reached out abruptly and slapped her hard in the face...
...It took all his official dignity ta escape a wet kiss...
...They arrived in the lurid yellow waiting room, lowceilinged, fluorescent-lighted, at nine o’clock sharp and lined up to get an application form...
...Beverly had listed Sam as Melissa’s absent father, of unknown whereabouts...
...It was a large, airy three-room apartment, owned, coincidentally, by a lawyer Beverly had met in family court...
...He pulled his arm away, jerking her towards him, and hit at her with his right...
...Sam in jail was for Beverly both a final blow and a welcome opportunity...
...They moved into cramped quarters at 87 1 Clinton, two rooms for $125 a month...
...Becoming an officially “poor” adult with children, she would qualify at last as a welfare mother, eligible for ADC-money that would not be burnt up before it reached her...
...The mothers eventually get bored with the sex and frightened by theviolence of moneyless men, and try to kick them out...
...They spent only $20 a week on food...
...Welfare, she hoped, could give her a new life...
...Among Bev’s other losses, if she married a man with ajob, would be Medicaid (about $2,000 a year) and food stamps ($1,044 net, at a rate of $20 a week for $42 worth of food...
...He would no longer have to take so much “shit” at work, no longer have to cringe before his boss when he was late, or get up early in the morning after a long night at Dinty’s...
...He sat in a big battered armchair in front ofthe$30 Salvation Army TV and sullenly watched the afternoon’s succession of game shows, soaps, and personality interviews flicker by in a blurred gray...
...I love you Sam...
...But Sam thought it was time that he and Bev rented their own place...
...She paid the rent so I had to do what she said,” Sam says...
...She jumped up, squealed, clapped her hands, put out and cast down her half-smoked Winston, and ran up to him...
...Beverly’s welfare check was $165 on the first and the 16th of every month, which meant that one whole payment went for rent...
...Bev suddenly realized he was in a rage...
...Sam’s job was pushing a wheelbarrow full of asphalt...
...At Concord Lumber in 1973, Sam earned approximately $100 a week before taxes, $87 after...
...After shefilledout theforms withone of the receiving clerks downstairs and had her picture taken for an ID card, she was sent to the Child Services and Housing departments upstairs...
...Damn you, bitch,” he said...
...Fifteen dollars George Gilder is a M’riler living in AIban~: New York...
...Crackdowns invariably focus on welfare mothers who are married and thus are identifiably tied to a jobholder...
...As an uncounted free rider on welfare, Sam was independent...
Vol. 10 • September 1978 • No. 6
