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The ultimate safety net, especially during a bad economy, is single-payer health care and a job. Lots of people have talked about the former and I won't elaborate here. I'll be talking about GUARANTEED EMPLOYMENT.
Welfare fulfills an important function in our society: helping people who are unemployed and would be destitute without it. However, nobody really likes paying people to do nothing. Our society is willing to help out but it wants something in return: work. So, if we're paying these people anyway, let's make them employees of the federal government and open the program up to anyone who needs a job.
Two critical questions come up at this point. What should these new federal employees do? And, how much should they be paid?
They should do any public-sprited thing people can think of. During the great depression workers in similar programs built roads and parks, took oral histories of the elderly, and many other useful, socially beneficial things.
These workers should be paid a minimum wage. I don't say that because I think a minimum wage is enough to live on. It must be raised and indexed to inflation. However, for this program to have any chance politically, I believe a minimum wage is the way to go. This keeps the program in the limited role of safety net because a minimum wage will attract few workers from the private sector. Applicants should be able to prove that they have been unemployed for at least 2 months before being hired.
This can be done at a cost of about $15 billion per million employees per year. That means we could give a job to all 10 million people who are currently unemployed in this country for $150 billion per year. This is far cheaper and fairer than our bailouts.
The program should last after the current recession. Half of the best safety net is a guaranteed job (of course these people could be fired if they don't show up to work, etc.) This could replace most of welfare with conservative support and without shafting the unemployed!
