Americans don’t understand government welfare, and this ignorance has created a dangerous and unfounded stigma against the poor. We have come to conflate welfare with government handouts, and government handouts with poverty. We look at the most visible welfare programs—food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid—and we assume that’s the extent of the welfare state. The welfare state is the system of government support for Americans through various benefits and programs. If we believe welfare only helps the lower classes, then many in the upper and middle classes argue they shouldn’t pay for it—there seems to be no just reason why their hard-earned income should be taxed to help those who aren’t as successful as them. But, Americans have overlooked the broad role that welfare plays in all of our lives, and  specifically the role that welfare plays in the lives of the rich. By choosing to ignore this part of the welfare state, we unnecessarily target the poor for their benefiting from government programs and create undue stigma. 

Notable programs in the visible welfare state are given to those with incomes that are below a certain threshold, usually the poverty line. These programs are more “visible” because they are direct expenditures. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families provides cash to recipients, while the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, provides benefits through a special debit card. This example of welfare spending is a tangible transfer of money from the government to families. In contrast, the hidden welfare state provides benefits largely through tax expenditures or exemptions, which are not tangible or easy to see. These hidden welfare state programs almost exclusively benefit the rich. The home mortgage interest deduction, the retirement savings contribution tax credit, and tax credit for charitable contributions are all examples of these hidden benefits. These are all largely inaccessible for the poor—those who cannot afford a mortgage, significant retirement savings, or large charitable contributions. Additionally, tax expenditures for employers that provide health benefits overwhelmingly benefit upper classes, who are more likely to receive employer-sponsored insurance. Welfare for the upper classes is not insignificant—all of these tax breaks add up to around 1.3 trillion every year, or 7 percent of GDP. So why is it that, when discussing the welfare state, people argue that it only serves to help the poor?

Data shows that the upper-classes do not understand that they are on welfare. The same people who try to take down the welfare state, believing that it only helps the poor, are often the same people who benefit from tax breaks and other government subsidies. Because of the unnecessary stigma and misrepresentation of welfare, many cannot imagine that they are welfare recipients as well. Author Suzzane Mettler, a researcher of public development, found that “on average, Americans in the highest income group and the lowest income group have used the same total number of benefits.” And yet, when she conducted a nationwide survey of 1,400 Americans, “Almost half... who received such submerged state benefits as home mortgage interest deductions, student loans or the earned income tax credit reported that they had not used a government social program.” So long as people are unaware that they are benefiting from welfare, they are more likely to distrust welfare and those on visible welfare programs. 

This stigma comes from the (often right-wing) idea that government aid programs need to be cut because they benefit the poor at the expense of the rich. Republican journalists and talking-heads argue that welfare is an overextension of government power, while failing to mention their own benefits from government programs. In just one example, a 1984 report written by the Foundation for Economic Education berates welfare as a force which serves to “benefit some (those considered poor) at the expense of others (everyone else).” Howard Baetjer, Jr., the author, believes that the government should take a more laissez-faire approach to welfare and instead force people to fend for themselves. Throughout the entire piece, Baetjer fails to mention that the government serves the rich as well, exclusively targeting the poor.  In fact, Baetjer is a highly esteemed professor at Towson University where he has access to an array of health care plans offered to him because Towson University receives a tax break for doing so. So, Baetjer is dependent on welfare as well. However, it is hard to imagine that as he calls for a more laissez-faire government, he also wants the government to stop subsidizing his healthcare or helping him save money on mortgage write-offs. Arguments that take aim at the poor for a service received by the rich are hypocritical and dangerous. They create unnecessary anger toward the government for supporting the poor, toward the poor for receiving aid, and toward  politicians for not doing enough to support America’s middle and upper classes. This anger is relatively misguided, given the extent of the hidden welfare state.

By focusing our attention and anger on poor recipients of welfare, labels and stigma are assigned to the poor, and force them to carry the burden of societal loathing. Baetjer’s piece is another great example of this. He writes that the “welfare system tends to encourage unproductiveness and discourage productivity.” Baetjer never bothers to clarify that he isn’t talking about the upper-class in America, he just assumes the reader would know that he is only talking about the poor. Why? Because, if we believe that only the poor qualify for government aid, we begin assigning labels to them, like “unproductive.” That argument is fueled by bias and self-righteousness and is dismissive of the difficult work that people with low-incomes do (an average of 30 hours per week in low-paying jobs in poor working conditions). Whether or not Baetjer is aware of his own biases, by characterizing welfare only as help for the poor, authors have implanted this kind of bias in many. 

Instead of using language like Baetjer, we need to discuss welfare in its entirety. By implying that government support only helps the poor and hurts the rich, we are creating an implicit bias against the poor in many Americans. One cannot condemn welfare while ignoring how they benefit from it. The truth becomes clear that people don’t distrust welfare. They distrust poor people. People don’t want the government to stop giving aid. Rather, they want the government to stop giving aid to poor people. By excluding the full story of welfare in the discussion, the poor are unduly lambasted with their benefit from government programs while the rich are forgiven. 

The language we use to discuss welfare needs to change to be inclusive. Today, many people are unaware of the benefits they receive from government aid because of how hidden the tax-exemption aspect of welfare is. When politicians and journalists discuss welfare benefits, they chastise the poor for receiving government aid and expanding the role of the government. Like Baetjer demonstrated, this is born from and promulgates the idea that the poor receive welfare because they are lazy and their dependency on welfare keeps them lazy. A discussion of welfare needs to reflect all recipients of government aid. If an author would like to criticize the poor for receiving government support, they must also criticise the rich. If they believe the government has gotten too big, then ending welfare for the poor will only solve half of their problem. Government support helps everyone, and we need to acknowledge that. The “hidden welfare state” needs to be revealed and become part of the conversation. We have created an unfair and untrue stigma around poor people and encouraged Americans to believe that lower income groups receive more government aid than others. Don’t distrust the government because it is giving money to poor people. Distrust the government because it isn’t telling you how much it’s giving to the rich.