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No, there is no beneficial business model for privatizing welfare benefits. There would be no revenue for the private companies, unless we gave them tax dollars. In which case, there would be a very strong incentive to deny benefits and keep our tax money as profit.
Same with schools and prisons. Perhaps private companies could come in and show the gov't how to reduce those costs, but privatizing them would be giving away our tax dollars to some company to keep as profit. Why else would a private company want "in" in these businesses? So they figured out how to save money, but it wouldn't matter 'cuz they kept it as savings.
The only exception I can think of would be a non-profit welfare charity. But, even charities pay CEO's and upper management millions, and no charity I can think of encompasses the vast amount of money that welfare entails... I'm all for saving money, but this wouldn't save money, it would simply reallocate it to businessmen. Are we supposed to make a GS 1,000 for these programs?
"Back to Work" is the work of lobbyists. A perfect example of why privatization doesn't work. (Who wants to pay unemployment insurance?)
Remember what happened in PA when youth incarceration went private? A judge became a failure of a man with an interest in sending kids to jail, resulting in a whole bunch of kids going to jail who did not deserve that sort of over punishment... imagine the results if we took everyone from the ages 18-100? Our prisons would be flooded, and private companies would be sending us tax payers the bill and making a boatload of money.
let's say welfare were privatised - who would decide on who gets what, how much, restrictions etc?
What would actually enforce payment and dispersion of resources to the poor?
How would lobby groups be kept out of the picture?
And how about the Church - where do they come into the scenario?
Of course it can work. It worked for hundreds of years. Food stamps and medicaid and school lunch programs and most of the rest of the welfare state were only introduced in the 2nd half of the 20th century.
That's not to say it can work tomorrow. The social safety net which used to exist in the private sector isn't there anymore. Democrats have seen to that. It's a simple formula which liberals deny they've done but it's there for any rational person to see -- you make the safety net into a responsibility of national government, then you champion its expansion, and then reap the votes of everyone dependent upon that safety net.
For us to get back to the way things are supposed to function, we'd have to get the mutual aid societies, churches, communities, charities, local governments, and nuclear families back that the Democrats dismantled.
The question really is.... Lets pretend that welfare no longer existed... What would happen?
Traditionally, welfare was handed out locally, through charities, and especially churches. These charities and churches generally operated on a very local level. You had very few large almost "corporate-type" charities(Salvation Army is a good example).
The question then really becomes, why did the government effectively supersede the private-charities. Or more importantly, did the private charities not provide adequate support to people who needed it?
Well, yes and no. In some respects, the private charities did a much better job than our welfare system. The private charities had a much better track record of bringing people out of poverty for instance. The problem with the private charities is really down to three major problems.
Since charities were largely local/community based, then depending on where you lived in the country, heavily affected what kind of assistance you could receive. Living in a poor state like West Virginia for instance, especially living in the backwoods somewhere, you may not have any reasonable access to assistance. And so, your family would generally be effectively starving, living off whatever critters you could shoot on your land. Even if you lived in a relatively wealthy state or region. If you lived far enough away from heavily populated areas, your access to assistance would be limited or non-existent.
Of course the simple solution to lack of access to assistance, would simply be to move to more populated areas. Of course that opens up the second problem. Where you live, and the problems with family dynamics.
There are shelters all over the country right now, but most of them are incredibly uncomfortable even for a single man. If you are a woman with children, the idea of having to live in a shelter is pretty scary(though there are generally specialty shelters for women). In the absence of government assistance, like public housing/section 8. Imagine the number of women with children who would need to find housing through charities. Most likely ending up in basically what amounts to "communes" or "multi-family shared apartments". And in such a situation, you have little to no privacy, and might be at a higher risk of abuse.
The last issue with charities, has to do with who provides the charity. A large percentage of charities in this country have traditionally been religious-based. So, depending on what religion you adhered to, could greatly affect your access to assistance. And being an "atheist" would reduce your access to assistance to near-zero. The religious-based charities that did allow other denominations, would still most likely press-upon the people utilizing such a charity a need to convert. Basically, if a person was living in a catholic-based housing program, he might be required to come to church on sunday, or there might be a bible in his room, to tithe, etc.
If the government stopped providing welfare, what would have to happen is that. Many people who live in more rural environments would necessarily have to move to more populated/urban areas. A lot more people would start going to church, whether or not they believed in god or not, to better have access to assistance.
Basically, the outcome of abolishing government assistance. Would be to create higher population densities, to lessen urban sprawl, to strengthen the bonds of communities and families, to enlarge the number of people going to church, to reduce the amount of drug and alcohol abuse, to reduce the number of single-parent families, to greatly increase morality in society, and to increase the overall productiveness of society.
The problem is that, it would create a huge amount of inconvenience. Between people having to possibly uproot their families to urban areas, to having to live in relatively close-quarters with other people, who will undoubtedly get into your business, as well as requiring more people to be actively involved in churches and communities. There is quite a difference between some nameless/faceless institution simply cutting you a check each month, and you having to personally go into a church or other institution and ask for something like groceries(IE, a food pantry).
Ultimately, I think abolishing government welfare would do wonders for the health of society. But, in order for people to vote against welfare, requires them to understand the harm done by welfare. If they don't understand the social destruction that the welfare system has wrought, then advocating to end government assistance just makes you feel like a heartless bastard, who just doesn't want to pay taxes.
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