THE WELFARE SYSTEM IS AGAINST BLACK FAMILIES....

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED THAT IN ORDER TO RECEIVE ASSISTANCE FROM THE GOVERNMENT, WHEN NEEDED, THERE CAN NOT BE A MAN IN THE PICTURE...?

Welfare or welfare work consists of actions or procedures — especially on the part of governments and institutions — striving to promote the basic well-being of individuals in need. These efforts usually strive to improve the financial situation of people in need but may also strive to improve their employment chances and many other aspects of their lives including sometimes their mental health. In many countries, most such aid is provided by family members, relatives, and the local community and is only theoretically available from government sources.

In American English, welfare is often also used to refer to financial aid provided to individuals in need, which is called benefit(s) or welfare benefits in British English.

From the 1930s on, New York City government provided welfare payments to the poor.[8] By the 1960s, as whites moved to the suburbs, the city was having trouble making the payments and attempted to purge the rolls of those who were committing welfare fraud. Twenty individuals who had been denied welfare sued in a case that went to the United States Supreme Court, Goldberg v. Kelly. The Court ruled that those suspected of committing welfare fraud must receive individual hearings before being denied welfare. David Frum considers this ruling to be a milestone leading to the city's 1975 budget disaster.

After the Great Society legislation of the 1960s, for the first time a person who was not elderly or disabled could receive a living from the American government. This could include general welfare payments, health care through Medicaid, food stamps, special payments for pregnant women and young mothers,and federal and state housing benefits. In 1968, 4.1% of families were headed by a woman on welfare; by 1980, this increased to 10%. In the 1970s, California was the U.S. state with the most generous welfare system. Virtually all food stamp costs are paid by the federal government.

Before the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, welfare was "once considered an open-ended right," but welfare reform converted it "into a finite program built to provide short-term cash assistance and steer people quickly into jobs." Prior to reform, states were given "limitless" money by the federal government, increasing per family on welfare, under the 60-year-old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. This gave states no incentive to direct welfare funds to the neediest recipients or to encourage individuals to go off welfare (the state lost federal money when someone left the system). One child in seven nationwide received AFDC funds, which mostly went to able-bodied single mothers.

After reforms, which President Bill Clinton said would "end welfare as we know it," amounts from the federal government were given out in a flat rate per state based on population.

The new program is called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). It also encourages states to require some sort of employment search in exchange for providing funds to individuals and imposes a five-year time limit on cash assistance. The bill restricts welfare from most legal immigrants and increased financial assistance for child care. The federal government also maintains an emergency $2 billion TANF fund to assist states that may have rising unemployment.

Millions of people left the welfare rolls (a 60% drop overall), employment rose, and the child poverty rate was reduced. A 2007 Congressional Budget Office study found that incomes in affected families rose by 35%. The reforms were "widely applauded" after "bitter protest." The Times called the reform "one of the few undisputed triumphs of American government in the past 20 years." Critics of the reforms sometimes point out that the reason for the massive decrease of people on the welfare rolls in the United States in the 1990s wasn't due to a rise in actual gainful employment in this population, but rather, due almost exclusively to their offloading into workfare, giving them a different classification than classic welfare recipient.

Aspects of the program vary in different states; Michigan, for example, requires a month in a job search program before benefits can begin.

The National Review editorialized that the Economic Stimulus Act of 2009 will reverse the welfare-to-work provisions that Bill Clinton signed in the 1990s and again base federal grants to states on the number of people signed up for welfare rather than at a flat rate. One of the experts who worked on the 1996 bill said that the provisions would lead to the largest one-year increase in welfare spending in American history. The House bill provides $4 billion to pay 80% of states' welfare caseloads. Although each state received $16.5 billion annually from the federal government as welfare rolls dropped, they spent the rest of the block grant on other types of assistance rather than saving it for worse economic times.

Welfare can take a variety of forms, such as monetary payments, subsidies and vouchers, health services, or housing. Welfare can be provided by governments, non-governmental organizations, or a combination of the two. Welfare schemes may be funded directly by governments, or in social insurance models, by the members of the welfare scheme.

Welfare systems differ from country to country, but welfare is commonly provided to those who are unemployed, those with illness or disability, those of old age, those with dependent children and to veterans. A person's eligibility for welfare may also be constrained by means testing or other conditions.

In a more general sense, welfare also means the well-being of individuals or a group, in other words their health, happiness, safety, prosperity, and fortunes.