> If you have the choice of making more from welfare, than from a job, picking the (hypothetical) better financial option is an incentive for you to stay poor?
It's not an incentive, it's a trap, and it's why AFDC was abandoned. It works like this -- let's say you're on welfare. If it's a typical program you can stay in the program only if you don't make much money the usual way. Once you start making your own money, the welfare ends, often in such a way that you have a smaller income than before your personal income increased. This was true about AFDC and it killed the program -- it was a powerful disincentive to work, or to rise economically. It kept the poor poor -- they had a disincentive to move upward.
It's not an incentive, it's a trap, and it's why AFDC was abandoned. It works like this -- let's say you're on welfare. If it's a typical program you can stay in the program only if you don't make much money the usual way. Once you start making your own money, the welfare ends, often in such a way that you have a smaller income than before your personal income increased. This was true about AFDC and it killed the program -- it was a powerful disincentive to work, or to rise economically. It kept the poor poor -- they had a disincentive to move upward.