Introduction
To some extent, government policies with regard to poverty, welfare, and unemployment are not living up to the expectations of the majority of the American people. Today the number of Americans living in poverty has significantly increased. With such exaggerated levels of poverty, the welfare of the people becomes threatened.
Welfare is defined as the minimal level of well-being and social support for all citizens (Kaufmann, 2012). In America, the people’s welfare is basically a responsibility of the government. The economy, on the other hand, faces challenges such as unemployment, to mention but a few. In the paper, the federal policies regarding the above-mentioned areas of public interest will be scrutinized and discussed at length.
Poverty policies
Within a span of one year only the poverty levels in the United States of America rose from 14.3 % in2009 to 15.1 % in 2010 (Levin-Waldman, 2012). This was the highest level of poverty recorded since 1993. The government’s approach in defining poverty is normally based on the gross income of individuals or families. To further identify the poverty level in America, the poverty threshold was set to help evaluate the situation on the ground. The American poverty threshold denotes poverty as the lack of common goods and services that are easily accessible by members of the ordinary society.
The federal government has other measures other than the threshold policy to keep the poverty levels on the watch. These include the poverty guidelines which are issued on a yearly basis by the Department Of Health And Human Services HHS (Levin-Waldman, 2012).
However, these guidelines are simple versions of the poverty threshold policy used mainly for administrative purposes (Kaufmann, 2012). The federal government uses these guidelines to estimate the number of Americans living in poverty and the level of poverty every year (Levin-Waldman, 2012).
Welfare policies
Welfare can be compared to charity in terms of meaning and the intention behind it. Welfare can be in many dispositions including monetary form, federal subsidies, vouchers and housing allowances. Welfare policies are meant to distribute wealth from the rich to the poor as well making the poor man’s burden lighter. The federal government offers subsidies for commodities that are essential to the general population and gives incentives to manufacturers of such products.
Unemployment
Unemployment is a subject that has been under discussion for too long in the recent past. The economic meltdown further took the height of joblessness higher than it was anticipated even by the economic ombudsmen. The federal government as stipulated in the social security Act of 1935 has an unemployment compensation program UC (Levin-Waldman, 2012). The main objective of this program is to provide temporary and partial wage replacement to workers employed and also to absorb the effects of an economic recession (Levin-Waldman, 2012).
Conclusion
The federal policies on the mentioned public interests are geared to a common end as discussed above in this research. The government is relentlessly devoted to shielding the American middle class and low income earners the economic burden influenced by the economic paradigm shift. The viability of these policies and their results, however, are slightly not very satisfying. A better approach and research on these issues are inevitably required to ascertain the best and effective ways to deal with poverty , joblessness and initiate welfare programs to the benefit of the American people.
References
Kaufmann, G. (2012). This Week in Poverty: Will the Poor Get Poorer in the Land of Lincoln? Web.
Levin-Waldman, O.,M. (2012). American Government. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.