The workhouse as a general concept is past due for rehabilitiation. With proper care taken to make sure that abuses are controlled it might be a superior solution to a lot of the social welfare problems our country faces at a much, much lower cost than the alternatives. We already have a precedent operating in our prison system. Prisoners in many states are put to work at a variety of tasks - telemarketing more than chain gangs these days - with the money going to pay reparations to their victims or to offset prison expenses or even to the prisoners themselves. Why not extend the concept to help out those without jobs or homes as well?
Here's how the system would work. Everyone would get 6 months of unemployment benefits to give them time to look for a new job. Those who remained unemployed after that period would no longer receive benefits but would become eligible to apply for a 'worker rehabilitation' program. These programs would be state supervised with some federal grant money for startup. They would provide workers with basic communal housing and food in exchange for which workers would be given work to do. They would also have access to basic job and money management education and would have a portion of their earnings reserved in an account from which they would receive a lump payment when they 'graduated' from the system.
Yes, it would be an awful lot like putting poor people in prison - or more like a combination job, public housing project and school. But it would work, and it would be humane, avoiding the problems of the workhouses of the past. Participants would be protected by a 'bill of rights', and an arbitration system if there were problems with management. All of their needs would be provided for, including on-site medical care and daycare for children. Families would be kept together and the complexes would include facilities for entertainment and exercise. Participants days would be strictly controlled. There would be 6 hours of work, 4 of education, 3 hours for meals, 2 hours for recreation and 9 hours for sleep every day. Life would be highly regimented for participants, but discipline is part of the training which they need. I'd even go so far as to suggest uniforms and organized team sports to develop a sense of community, as well as taking away most peronal possessions on a temporary basis, including automobiles and televisions - all to be returned on 'graduation'.
Article comments
1 - Fan of Gonzo
Hey, Gonzo Marx is right, this article is more relevant today than ever before. A real, humane solution to poverty and homelessness!
FOG
2 - Dave Nalle
Relevant in August and even more relevant today when it's a year old and still just as valid for this holiday season as it was for the last.
I actually went to a performance of Oliver today at a local theater and it reminded me of this article during the scene in the foundling home and with the street arabs working for Fagin.
The problems of poverty were so much greater in Dickens England than they were today, yet they managed to find solutions which required minimal government intrusion and were potentially humane - had they been managed less corruptly.
It may seem backwards, but perhaps we could learn something from that past culture.
Dave
3 - Christopher Rose
There's also the issue that most people simply wouldn't co-operate with such a scheme, especially in such an excessively individualised country as the USA. I doubt that would even work in Europe, Dave, where we still generally believe that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the individual.
4 - Dave Nalle
And I agree with the rights of the individual being paramount in a free society, but the workhouse concept can work within that context, if as I suggest in the article, participation is on an at will basis. You would always have the option to leave the system, receive no public assistance and sink or swim on your own.
Dave
5 - gonzo marx
until yer busted for "vagrancy" under your plan, eh Mr Nalle?
as long as Profit is involved for corporate structure you will have abuses....check the history of work programs in our prison system...many instances of abuse...not quite on the Dickensian scale, but still there
there are some possibilities in this Concept, i just cannot see it working as long as Corporate culture is allowed to be in charge...since Profit is their only motivation rather than the welfare of those Involved...far too easy for a "company store" type scam where these poor folks can never get themselves out of Debt to the "system" and essentially become indentured servants to "the Company"
does anyone else but me see the Irony of the same person writing this piece AND the Santa Claus piece at the same time?
could just be me
Excelsior!
6 - Dave Nalle
until yer busted for "vagrancy" under your plan, eh Mr Nalle?
At which point you'd be given three hots and a cot, medical care and a roof over your head for six months 'recovery' which would include drying out and detoxing, after which you'd be free to try again.
as long as Profit is involved for corporate structure you will have abuses....check the history of work programs in our prison system...many instances of abuse...not quite on the Dickensian scale, but still there
I'm certainly no fan of private prison management, which has a dismal record, but private charities have a much better record, and they'd be in the lead role here.
there are some possibilities in this Concept, i just cannot see it working as long as Corporate culture is allowed to be in charge...since Profit is their only motivation rather than the welfare of those Involved...far too easy for a "company store" type scam where these poor folks can never get themselves out of Debt to the "system" and essentially become indentured servants to "the Company"
This is only because you think that businesses are inherently evil, when that's really not the case.
does anyone else but me see the Irony of the same person writing this piece AND the Santa Claus piece at the same time?
You think Santa would not endorse a humane system to provide support for the most needy in society?
Dave
7 - EBANESER SCROOGE
WHEN I WAS BROUGHT HERE EVEERBODY TREATED ME THE WRONG WAY I DON'T MEAN MY MOM I KNOW SHE LOVES ME DARLY BUT WHAT I'PRONOUNCE HUMBUG I NEED E.M TO MEET THERE MATCH
8 - Dr Dreadful
My Dickens must be off. If Ebenezer grew up in the workhouse, then presumably it must have been that Twist fellow who wasn't keen on Christmas.
9 - bliffle
Given the 2009 circumstances, the widespread failures of our leaders and rulers, do we need Workhouses for the rich?
10 - Roger Nowosielski
Siberian labor camps is a much better place.
11 - bliffle
If the purpose of Workhouses is to administer a dose of humility to slackers that, one hopes, will inspire them to go forward and do better, who is more deserving than the rich knaves who precipitated this economic fiasco?
12 - Dave Nalle
Workhouses are for people who have no means of support and need a place to live and 3 square meals. I think that what your class-envy desires for the rich are deathcamps.
Dave
13 - Roger Nowosielski
I don't subscribe to any class envy concept, Dave, nor do I share it. It's foreign to me - as it ought to be to every true-blue American. That's one reason, I maintain, why communist ideology in America is a dead end: we've all bought into the bourgeoise values and those of egalitarianism.
But your anger should be more directed against these greedy bastards rather than the poor.
14 - Mar k
We will (hedge: might well) need 'workhouses' along the line of the CCC before this crisis is over. Dave is the humanist in this case.
As for the other red meat -- the French found the guillotine cathartic.
15 - Roger Nowosielski
I'd like to believe that (about Dave). And it may have to come to that unless we experience a miraculous recovery. The Soviet experiment, though, with forced labor camps for "crimes against society" is more humane and constructive than the Reign of Terror. I sure hope that people like Madoff and Sanford get their proper due.
16 - Dave Nalle
I don't believe I've expressed any anger towards the poor. Read this article. It's really a pretty sensible suggestion on how to handle the poor and unemployed humanely, adapting the victorian idea which was originally quite liberal in intent to the modern context, while addressing the obvious shortcomings.
Dave
17 - Roger Nowosielski
Well, if it's going to be like anything that Mark suggested in #14, approximating CCC, I'd have no problem with it - a kind of halfway house. Except I mightn't go for what was a liberal standard in the Victorian age. I believe we've progressed somewhat since.
18 - Dave Nalle
What you've got to remember about 19th century liberalism is that while their intentions were usually good, their ability to follow through on them sometimes left something to be desired.
In the case of workhouses they went wrong because although they had the right idea by putting them out for private management, there was too little government oversight. We've gotten better at that since then, plus liberal values have permeated the society far more, so that no one is going to let a workhouse run as a business become abusive. Someone in authority will claim oversight and regulatory power and keep things in line.
Dave
19 - bliffle
What silliness has been voiced here since my post #11.
Workhouses for the poor are NOT instituted to help the poor and provide them with 3 hot meals a day and a warm place to sleep. Anyone with an eye in his head can see that everywhere this has been done that the cheap privatizers responsible ALWAYS drive the expenditures down to gruel and a diseased blanket.
Do you really think that Dave Nalle suddenly gives a care about the fortunes of the miserable? How deluded must you be?
Workhouses, which have always been miserable disease-ridden holes within which people die with alarming suddenness, have ALWAYS been with the intention of punishing the poor and unfortunate. "So that they may improve" is always the given excuse.
That's why the poor avoid them like the plague. They are horrible. And there is NO way to improve workhouses. Because at the very center of the whole scheme is not help, but PUNISHMENT. They are invented by punishers, not helpers.
Take a look at the people who advocate workhouses.
So, as I said before, the purpose of workhouses is to improve the 'morals' and behaviour of failed people.
In that case, why not workhouses for the rich failures we find all around us? Perhaps they'll do better in the future.
Isn't that what Mao did with his "8th of May" camps? And didn't it work?