The Uncertain Hour

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GOBIERNO
SERIE BIMESTRAL

Each season, we explain the weird, complicated and often unequal American economy — and why some people get ahead and some get left behind. Host Krissy Clark dives into obscure policies and forgotten histories to explain why America is like it is. The latest season examines the “welfare-to-work industrial complex” and the multi-million dollar companies running today’s for-profit welfare centers.

EPISODIO 3

Chapter 3: Race and rumor

In the 1950s, a rumor that people were moving to Newburgh, NY to live off welfare riled up the city. When city leaders essentially declare war on welfare — and the people who get it — things tumble out of control. Plus, how national suspicions grew about people getting welfare right as more black people started gaining more access to welfare benefits. Host Krissy Clark and producer Peter Balonon-Rosen go back in history to tell a surprising origin story of part of our welfare system — and take a magnifying glass to how our country determines who deserves help and who doesn’t. Give today to help cover the costs of this rigorous reporting. Every donation makes a difference! https://support.marketplace.org/uncertain-sn

36 min
EPISODIO 4

Chapter 4: The Battle of Newburgh

In 1961, city officials in Newburgh, New York, declared war on their poorest residents by proclaiming, without evidence, that the city was overrun by welfare cheats. It was a moment in history when the belief that certain people need to be forced to work gained influence in our country’s system to help poor people. Officials led by City Manager Joseph Mitchell launched a campaign of harsh crackdowns on welfare recipients that included surprise police interrogations, rigid eligibility restrictions and forcing able-bodied men to work to receive a welfare check. But were these new rules designed to reduce welfare fraud or to target members of the city’s Black community? After a national controversy erupted over Newburgh’s welfare rules, the city found itself at the center of a fight over welfare policy that’s still playing out today. Producer Peter Balonon-Rosen takes us back to Newburgh to tell the story of its war on welfare and how race became central in a battle over welfare policy. Give today to help cover the costs of this rigorous reporting. Every donation makes a difference! https://support.marketplace.org/uncertain-sn

36 min
EPISODIO 5

Chapter 5: Profits and Perverse Incentives

Antoine Dukes is a natural born salesman. And when he started working for a for-profit welfare company, he figured it was a good way to put his skills to work helping needy Americans find jobs that would get them back on their feet. But when he tried to avoid sending people to minimum wage jobs, something happened that made him realize that these welfare companies are rewarded with taxpayer dollars for getting welfare recipients into just about any job, even if the job would not support their family and would leave them still needing government help to make ends meet. In this episode, host Krissy Cark sheds light on this opaque business model — and has a frank conversation with the founder of America Works, one of the first for-profit welfare-to-work companies in the country. Give today to help cover the costs of this rigorous reporting. Every donation makes a difference! https://support.marketplace.org/uncertain-sn

49 min
EPISODIO 6

Chapter 6: The Welfare to Temp Work Pipeline

Since the 1990s, most cash welfare recipients have been required to get a job or do mandated “work activities” to receive their monthly check. These requirements are intended to help parents who are struggling financially into jobs that will help keep them out of poverty and off government benefits. But is the work requirement system meeting either of those goals? According to our analysis of data from Wisconsin, an average of nearly 70% of employed welfare participants worked at temp companies. These companies put people to work in other companies, trying to fill temporary jobs where the work is often grueling and the pay low. Welfare-to-work has been so good for temp agencies that some of them actively lobby for more work requirements for government benefits through campaign contributions and white papers. “It gives us a pool of more people we can help,” said the CEO of one temp company whose franchises have ranked among the top 10 employers of Wisconsin welfare participants. “A person loses self-esteem when they don’t go back to work. Whether it’s voluntary or involuntary work is very important for their psyche.” On this episode, host Krissy Clark looks at the cozy relationship between for-profit welfare companies and temp companies desperate to put people to work in some of the country’s most precarious jobs. Plus, a frank discussion with an architect of our modern welfare-to-work system, former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson. For a deeper dive into the numbers about how private welfare contractors make money and some other eye-popping data, check out the work of our colleagues at APM Research Lab. Give today to help cover the costs of this rigorous reporting. Every donation makes a difference!

55 min
15/03/2023

Season 6: The Welfare-to-Work Industrial Complex

“Get a job!” That sums up our current cash welfare system in a nutshell. Ever since so-called welfare reform in the 1990s, the system has been based on the idea that welfare recipients must be doing some kind of work or “job-readiness activity” to receive government assistance. Today, anyone who signs up for cash welfare must quickly find a job or navigate a maze of work requirements that are designed, in theory, to prepare people for having a job and make sure they’re not freeloading off the government. It’s a system that plays on what Americans have always wanted to believe — that all it takes to move out of poverty is a can-do attitude and hard work. Now there is a growing chorus of politicians who argue that even more programs that help people in need — including food stamps, Medicaid and public housing — should have more and tougher work requirements attached. Some are calling it Welfare Reform 2.0. But as politicians push these programs in the name of ending “welfare dependency,” behind the scenes there’s something else going on. A group of multimillion-dollar corporations have built their businesses on these welfare-to-work policies, and critics say they have cultivated their own cycle of dependency on the federal government. So do work requirements actually help people climb out of poverty? Where did this idea of requiring labor in exchange for government aid come from? And how are for-profit welfare companies cashing in? Turns out the answers can be surprising and troubling. The sixth season of “The Uncertain Hour” is an up-close look at the welfare-to-work industrial complex, and some of the multimillion-dollar for-profit companies that run many welfare offices around the country. As politicians call for more work requirements in government safety-net programs, this series explains how welfare programs have evolved into a system that often places poor and vulnerable Americans into jobs that do not support their families and often leave them on government assistance. A system that has meanwhile funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to private contractors.

4 min
22/03/2023

Chapter 1: The dream

When a struggling mother of two in Milwaukee hits hard times, she turns to a local welfare office for help — a welfare office outsourced to a private, for-profit company. Inside, staff preach the power of work, place people into unpaid “work experience” and enforce work requirements for welfare recipients, all in the name of teaching self-sufficiency. But who’s set to benefit most? That struggling mother or the for-profit company she turned to? Host Krissy Clark takes listeners into the world of for-profit welfare companies to examine America’s welfare-to-work system, work requirements and the multimillion-dollar industry that’s grown up around it.

45 min
29/03/2023

Chapter 2: The compliance machine

Americans who turn to public assistance have something in common: They’re poor and vulnerable. But that’s where the similarities end. There’s a wide range of work experience and education among them — and often very different circumstances that landed them on welfare. But when they walk through the door of a welfare office seeking cash aid, they often come up against a system primarily focused on ensuring that they meet work requirements mandated by federal law, whether the required labor is helpful for their particular circumstances or not. A single mother of two from Chicago learned this the hard way. She had been working and taking classes to become an addiction counselor when her life fell apart. The father of her youngest child assaulted her so badly, it put her in the hospital. Worried for her safety and the safety of her children, she fled to Milwaukee and signed up for welfare, hoping it would live up to the promise of providing employment and self-sufficiency. Instead, she ended up in a Kafkaesque maze of “job readiness” classes she didn’t need, work assignments that earned her less than the equivalent of minimum wage and leads for warehouse jobs that didn’t fit her resume. When her life hit another crisis, things hit rock bottom. Host Krissy Clark examines the roots of this cookie-cutter regime and discovers that a fundamental part of the problem lies in how the landmark 1996 welfare reform bill measures success — which has little to do with helping participants gain family-sustaining employment.

54 min

Ver toda la temporada 6 (7)

Krissy Clark

Presentador(a)

4.7

de 5

2,168 calificaciones

One of the best podcasts around

21/07/2024

Mi Corazoncito

Required listening for everyone!
Well done

17/01/2024

Mustnaglover

An excellent podcast I’m eager to listen to
Great series

06/08/2023

AJM08AZ

Informative and engaging. A must-listen for any U.S. taxpayer.
Welfare to work

18/08/2023

Tio JibJab

Great episode but it would helpful to research the options, if any, to get people off welfare. We have many families that are generational. welfare as described in the book Random Family written by Andrian Nicole LeBlanc.

Each season, we explain the weird, complicated and often unequal American economy — and why some people get ahead and some get left behind. Host Krissy Clark dives into obscure policies and forgotten histories to explain why America is like it is. The latest season examines the “welfare-to-work industrial complex” and the multi-million dollar companies running today’s for-profit welfare centers.