The sudden rise shown in the chart from the analysis done in 2004 is not an estimate that the government or voluntary organizations want to counter especially with the global financial crises that is currently weakening economic structures in the U.S. As well as the world. Many members of the government and the voluntary organizations setup for the provision of welfare benefits agree that the poverty and bankruptcy levels will likely get worse then the predicted measures if the measures to control them and the measures to spread awareness on the social security aspect are not set in place immediately.
Minimum wages and welfare:
In my opinion, one of the basic things that made a huge difference at Staten Island under one of the welfare provision structures implemented by project hospitality was increasing the minimum wage percentages. Even though the overall debate on the minimum wage as a solitary factor has been growing in recent times, I truly believe that once the overall minimum wage issues is resolved, the loops in the welfare structure that exist nowadays would largely disappear. Furthermore, one of my earliest tasks as an internee at Staten Island was to conduct a survey on the possible solutions that the people believed were applicable in order to improve the overall welfare services that they were receiving. The diagram below shoes the primary and most relevant results that I received from the survey (questionnaire), starting with the welfare strategies that received the highest support to the strategies that received the lowest.
Defense and welfare:
Upon further questioning, I also realized that people in general had a huge problem with the overall amount of finance that was allocated to the defense sector. They all believed that the defense sector was not a means to provide welfare but the overall finance allocation has been used as a means to further the political goals of governments with little to no concern about what the community and society thinks. This perception is shared by many individuals in the voluntary sector as well who feel that the increase of finance allocation of defense was not in order to ensure that the overall welfare structure of the country improved. The diagram below shows the overall defense expenditure of the governments all over the world for the year 2008:
As an intern at the office of Congressman Michael E. McMahon District 13 NY, I was surrounded by people with a completely different viewpoint on the same issue of increasing the financial allocation of defense as a welfare strategy. There were many, along with the Congressman McMahon himself, who believed truly that increasing the defense and security measures of the country, especially after the September 11 attacks on the U.S. soil, became an important factor to provide not only appropriate welfare to the people but to ensure that their welfare is not threatened again. They support this by highlighting the overall social, psychological, property and infrastructure ingratitude that the county went through, which probably would have been avoided if the defense structure was allowed to be made stronger with higher resource allocations. During my internship at the Congressman's office, they recorded the following financial contributions to the defense sector, which clearly shows their support for the investment in the defense sector as a welfare policy:
Interest category
Contributions
Defense Aerospace
$18,390,170
Defense Electronics
$14,553,491
Miscellaneous Defense
$12,804,772
Defense and welfare: who is right?
This particular difference of opinion and viewpoint between the government and the volunteer organization begs the question: who is right? What I have learned working at two such different offices is that it's not about who's right, it's about priorities. Welfare security and structures are meant to be flexible because the idea of welfare differs from one year to the next. That is why the importance of the voluntary organizations and internships procedures are very necessary because one gets to learn the viewpoints of both sides and can act as buffer between the community, the voluntary organization setup for the provision of welfare benefits and the government. This was one of the most important things I learned working at these two offices: the importance of having organizations and individuals who could act as an efficient and lucid buffer and communicator between the three human resources aforementioned.
However, I also learned, during my internship at the offices, that there were certain issues where both the government and the voluntary organizations saw eye-to-eye that included:
Health concerns
Litigation policies and their application
These three aspects were considered by both the Congressman McMahon and the people at Project hospitality as integral parts of the welfare structure that any and every community needed to have in order for them to progress and grow.
Healthcare and welfare:
Project Hospitality already services the needs of the communities at Staten Island that encompass not only food, housing and clothing but proper healthcare services like legal help, assistance for case of mental disability, history...
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