Talk:Welfare spending

Merge?

Could this be merged with Social welfare? -- Zoe

Isn't the "productive/unproductive" comment a little contentious? A working man with a low wage may be more "productive" than a man living off inherited wealth. Exile

Just to clarify that comment - not all welfare payments go to the unemployed.

Also, some welfare is "in kind" eg free health care and education. In the UK, the majority of the population both pays taxes and receives welfare. Also, most people in the UK, regardless of circumstances, will be net gainers from the welfare system when in childhood, in old age and in periods of illness and unemployment, and will be net losers during periods of paid employment. Welfare acts as a kind of socialised insurance scheme. So, to characterise welfare as a payment from the productive to the unproductive deserves deletion, or at least putting in quotes, I feel. Exile

Don't forget childcare, at least in the US. Hyacinth 04:12, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

---

Currently, the Further Reading section occupies a full half of the article! Perhaps some trimming is required? -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:10, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

article split

I thought I would split the article welfare into welfare (disambiguation) and welfare (financial aid). The reason is that I thought the description of different possible things that welfare could mean was beginning to get a bit long, and that welfare as financial aid is a big enough subject area to deserve a separate article to general welfare.

Okay I know there's already the Social Security (United States) - but I think that a separate article about welfare can be expanded to compare different welfare and financial aid systems in different countries - or, rather, the things in other countries that might be called welfare in the US.

However - admittedly I didn't look at the list of articles that link to welfare before making the split. And there's loads of them. Checking the relevancy of all the links and editing them will be a lot of work. I've changed a handful already but before doing lots of them, I want to get some feedback to see if people think this is a good idea, or if we should just go back to the single article we had before. Thanks. Squashy 23:15, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh yeah - the original article at welfare has got a very long edit history. By rights I should have moved that over here - I realise that now but didn't at the time. Whoops. Sorry. Course, I've also created a talk page here, so I can't do it myself now. So I shall be requesting a administrator manual move of the welfare history to here. Squashy 10:04, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Above comments predate this being a disambiguation page

Corporate welfare

Corporate welfare is not a pejorative to everyone -- just to anarchists and few joking conservatives.--Chuck (talk) 00:01, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Reorganisation

I've turned this back into an article, merging content from welfare (financial aid) and social welfare provision, which are now both redirects. This article is still in very basic shape, but the previous situation was an absolute mess, with terrible duplication across multiple articles. There is still social security to merge into this.

This is still missing a theory and policy section to discuss sociological and public policy approaches to welfare, and similarly the history section needs expanding. Summaries of various national welfare systems should help to flesh out the general overview sections also. A terminology section might also be useful to discuss some of the various names that are used, as well as specialised terms like welfare state (which can probably exist as a separate article but also currently duplicates much material and should be trimmed and then summarised here).

The disambiguation material is now at welfare (disambiguation), which was previously a redirect. Once you take out the duplicated articles and the dicdef stuff, all that's left is the movie, the ships, the economics topic (which is unrelated to this topic) and animal welfare, which is related to a different dicdef. This topic is appropriate for primary disambiguation, those other topics beng not sufficiently important to dislodge this one in my view. --bainer (talk) 16:03, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Good bold move, but though you apparently incorporated almost everything from one article, you incorporated almost nothing from the other, whose last version is here. --Espoo (talk) 17:40, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

It was mostly unsourced generalisations (on forms of welfare, and on circumstances in which it is provided), not that they were incorrect but it would probably be better to start from scratch. --bainer (talk) 23:21, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Pogey?

I like typing odd-sounding and (often) made-up words into the wikipedia search function just to see where they take me. I was redirected to this page when I entered "pogey." I could find no reference to "pogey" at all in the article. Can anyone here tell me what the connection is?165.91.65.2 (talk) 03:15, 27 September 2009 (UTC)RKH

According to this prior revision in the redirect's history, apparently it is "A Canadian term used to describe unemployment payments." The Wiktionary entry for the word also says the same thing. Although I'm Canadian myself but have never heard of the word <shrug>. Anyways, I've decided to redirect the word to Social welfare in Canada instead and tagged the redirect with {{R from alternative name}}. -- œ^™ 05:37, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Add this?

"In requiring reports of a beneficial interest in Trust funds and of holdings of a trustee, the law reveals a portion of the social security system of the rich. It is an excellent system, and provides much security for its beneficiaries. But in considering it, one wonders about the oft heard thesis of many conservative and ultra-conservative spokesmen and newspapers that the federal Social Security System, the Family Welfare System and the trade-union system all carry great danger of destroying the characters of the participants. They might, among other things, become mercenary or lazy. The rich themselves very evidently do not believe that being the beneficiaries of huge trust funds has undermined their characters, or that establishing trust funds for their children will distort the children's characters. No case has come to light where the children of the wealthy have been left penniless for their own benefit... Why, if drawing benefits without labor from a big trust fund does not destroy character, will drawing benefits in old age from Social Security or a pension system do so? Why would a true Welfare State be injurious to the general public when a private welfare system of trust funds is not apparently injurious to its limited number of beneficiary heirs?" Ferdinand Lundberg, "The Rich and the Super-Rich" Stars4change (talk) 05:47, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Template added today and later blanked.

I blanked the template recently added to this page because it seemed to me to be potentially highly contentious. There should be a good reason for adding this kind of template because there are already categories and related links as a way of getting further information.

I'd be grateful if editors would take a look at the template as it was before I delted it and also at the discussion I started at the template's talk page and provide some feedback.

I just have a sense that visuality of the template and some of the subcategories could have had a politically unbalanced presentation not in the spirit of Wikipedia. For instance the linking with articles about the negative side of the welfare state (fraud, dependency, etc.) without equal linking to articles on the positive side (alleviation of stress, social cohesion, etc.). Also some of the articles where the template was placed seem to me to have very little to do with the welfare state per se. --Hauskalainen (talk) 18:34, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

The goal is to help users find related articles in Economics and it should be kept for that reason, so I'm putting it back. Economics is a pretty well established field, and welfare economics is a major part, so it seems not very controversial. Please don't erase material without getting a consensus first. Rjensen (talk) 09:23, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the fields are non-controversial. But the use of the sidebar is. There is a risk (as I have mentioned here and here for sidebars such as this to be misused.Firstly, there is the danger are that if you, as an editor, only have the article on your watchlist, you will NOT be aware of changes made to the template which feeds into the article you are watching; and secondly that edits made to the sidebar may feed inappropriate material into the main article thru sissociated connections. The one I witnessed was a connection being drawn between Universal Health Care and Sociialism. As far as I am aware, there is no such connection. There are socialist societities without UHC and capitalistics ones with UHC.

If the goal is there to help users find other articles, what is wrong with using Wikilinks and the "See Also" section? This would completley get around the objections that I have raised and the reader equally well able to find related articles. --Hauskalainen (talk) 15:47, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

we should look at the article as not just about welfare, but about a branch of economics, alongside other branches. I do not see anything at all controversial or misleading about the Economics sidebar, and it will draw econ students to this article because it appears on many other articles as well where they start from. Rjensen (talk) 16:07, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

We are not discussing the economics sidebar but the welfare state sidebar which, on the surface, was about the welfare state, but which had serious problems because of its contentious content politically charged content and because of that content flowing onto many inappropriate pages even without watchers of that page being aware of it. Do you really think serious students of the welfare economics should be directed to articles called Nanny state? This is a politically charged term which has a rightful place in the encyclopedia but not in a way that it can appear prominently in potentially a hundred or more different articles. Please tell me what is wrong with using Wikilinks and See Also. You have avoided this, the most pertinent question that I posed.--Hauskalainen (talk) 19:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Misusing of refs

Jagged 85 (talk · contribs) is one of the main contributors to Wikipedia (over 67,000 edits; he's ranked 198 in the number of edits), and practically all of his edits have to do with Islamic science, technology and philosophy. This editor has persistently misused sources here over several years. This editor's contributions are always well provided with citations, but examination of these sources often reveals either a blatant misrepresentation of those sources or a selective interpretation, going beyond any reasonable interpretation of the authors' intent. Please see: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85. That's an old and archived RfC. The point is still valid though, and his contribs need to be doublechecked. I searched the Welfare (financial aid) page history, and found 4 edits by Jagged 85 (for example, see this edits). Tobby72 (talk) 14:12, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

U.S. Welfare

The welfare discussion under the subsection of the United States is very minimal and simplistic. Unlike other countries, the U.S. is an extremely diverse country, with many different languages, ethnicities, and immigrant groups. This diversity makes the welfare system very complex and, particularly, racialized. Therefore, it is imperative that a discussion on misperceptions of welfare be included, as well as a presentation of how welfare, a program designed to assist the neediest, has become to be closely associated with specific races/ethnicities (primarily Hispanics and African Americans). Unmdgs (talk) 02:01, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I support a split, this subject needs to be developed in a dedicated article. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 02:32, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Confusing phrases with no source

The sentence quoted below is currently in the article. I can't make sense of this sentence and I'm especially confused by the phrase "black T-ford" (is the something to do with cars?). I suspect this is country specific colloquialism and as such needs some explanation if it is going to be used in the article. Is this describing a system to preserve "a good life" at various levels between a minimum and average (the current grammar seems to suggest this), or is it describing a system to raise quality of life from a minimum to average?

It is also a systematic infrastructure to protect a good life, from a minimum up to (today) just about average (like 'one size fits all' or 'black T-ford').

Anonymous watcher (talk) 13:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The explanation on vouchers is quite confusing because of the diction and syntax. Here is how the article explains vouchers:

"In a budget constraint between ‘all other goods’ and a ‘voucher good’ our budget constraint will shift out parallel to an amount equal to the amount of the voucher but the money we have to spend on ‘all other goods’ remains capped at the same amount we had to spend before the voucher. Voucher programs can make us worse off because of the cap on our ability to spend on ‘all other goods’ our indifference curves could limit us."

I do not completely understand what the author wished to convey. He or she may have been trying to argue that when people receive vouchers for one service, they change their spending habits with respect to other services. There are much clearer ways to express that message. Ibnsina786 (talk) 9:56, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

History of Social Welfare page needed

This is an important topic and yet the history section is weak. Worth adding a History of Social Welfare page? Nathangeffen (talk) 06:38, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Tagging for primary sources (POV, Neutrality) in Ethnic heterogenity

The new section Ethnic heterogenity, appears to be based on primary sources. Please help improve the section by locating independent secondary sources which establish the weight of views expressed in the primary sources. aprock (talk) 20:55, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

The source is a literature review and not a primary source. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 20:56, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

The content you added just cites primary sources through the review. In fact, the actual synthesis of the review is ignored in the content you added:

However, our main conclusion from this survey is that most studies do not point to a quantitatively important role for ethnic diversity in shaping natives’ preferences for redistribution. In most studies, the association is much weaker than for other factors such as own income (current or expected) or beliefs about the role of effort versus luck in determining this income. Moreover, it seems that the sizeable negative association between ethnic diversity and support for redistribution that is sometimes found in U.S. studies does not generalize to Canada or Europe. However, the evidence for countries other than the U.S. is scarce so far, and there is certainly need for further research.

. Based on this, it appears that the section has significant POV issues. aprock (talk) 21:15, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

All reviews cites primary sources so that is not a reason for exclusion. I have mentioned that the effect is weak. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 21:19, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Picking and choosing which of the reviewed primary sources to highlight is WP:SYNTHESIS. Ignoring the actual conclusion (most studies do not point to a quantitatively important role for ethnic diversity) to instead promote your own interpretation (statistically significant but relatively weak negative relationship) is a perfect example of POV editing. aprock (talk) 21:22, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

The introductory statement also states that the effect is sometimes quite strong in the US which I have not mentioned. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 21:26, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Do you have an alternative formulation? We could quote the actual text if you prefer.Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 21:32, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Probably the best way to approach a technical review would be to use the Non-technical summary on page three as a basis for the content:[1]

excerpt from paper
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
There is a large literature on the costs and benefits of immigration within a given system of social security. More recently, economists have begun to address a related question: does immigration and, more generally, ethnic diversity change this system of social security in turn? A number of empirical studies suggest that ethnic diversity does indeed matter for the extent of redistribution. First, there is evidence that actual public spending is associ- ated with the degree of ethnic diversity. Second, studies that attempt to explore the mechanisms behind this aggregate relationship have found that individual attitudes and behaviour are affected by ethnic diversity. The purpose of this paper is to survey this empirical literature. We cover the studies that have appeared since the survey by Alesina and La Ferrara (2005) in the Journal of Economic Literature. In particular, we review the fast-growing literature that uses controlled experiments to study the effects of ethnic diversity on redistribution. Our main conclusion from this survey is that although numerous studies document a negative and statistically significant relationship, most of these studies do not point to a quantitatively important role for ethnic diversity in shaping natives’ preferences for redistribution. In most studies, the association is much weaker than for other factors such as own income (current or expected) or beliefs about the role of effort versus luck in determining this income. Moreover, it seems that the sizeable negative association between ethnic diversity and support for redistribution that is sometimes found in U.S. studies does not generalize to Canada or Europe. However, the evidence for countries other than the U.S. is scarce so far, and there is certainly need for further research.

It's difficult to imagine that we can improve on the authors own lay summary. aprock (talk) 21:40, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure, as a basis, but it is not particularly clear in places like how individual attitudes and behavior are affected. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 21:45, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

If those details are not mentioned in the lay summary, they don't need to be in wikipedia. aprock (talk) 21:48, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

No such rule. If something is unclear it should be clarified. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 21:50, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

When you pick and choose what parts of a source to include, and what parts to exclude, that is synthesis. Using generally accepted summary sections of a source as a basis for content is the straightforward way to approach the issue. Comparing the content that you inserted with the lay summary above, there is a clear disconnect indicating POV issues with what you added. Instead of advocating for highlighting whatever portions of the review that you are most interested in promoting, I suggest you start from scratch with the lay summary. aprock (talk) 21:59, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Using your argumentation everything except a complete quote of the whole paper or the whole summary is a synthesis. There is no policy that states that only certain portions of a study are allowed. A summary should be a basis but if it is unclear this should be fixed. Acadēmica Orientālis (talk) 22:07, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Odd sentence.

In the end, this term replaces "charity" as it was known for thousands of years, being the act of providing for those who temporarily or permanently could not provide for themselves.

...does it, though? Charity is still used in this sense, welfare refers more to the systems in place than the act itself, and I'm not sure what the sentence is getting at overall, exactly.Twin Bird (talk) 04:47, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Wrong title

This article is in the English Wikipedia not the American English Wikikipedia! The word welfare in most English speaking countries (England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and in others such as India where English is a secondary language) do NOT use the word WELFARE to mean a system of government aid. Only American English spoken in the United States uses the word WELFARE to mean WELFARE PAYMENT. I do not deny that some writers in countries outside the U.S. will occasionally refer to welfare as shorthand for welfare payment (i.e. "those living on welfare"), but it is not normative to do so.

I went to government web sites in Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and searched using the word WELFARE as the search term and what came back were, as I expected, references to WELFARE in the normative sense of WELLBEING. Examples were child welfare (the wellbeing of children) and animal welfare (the wellbeing of animals). References in non government websites to WELFARE STATE also do so in the normative sense of being a government that ensures the welfare of its citizens. And this can be done by law (such as preventing exploitative child labor, providing basic education, employment rights etc., and not just guaranteeing wellbeing through government financial aid for the poor.

From the comments in sections above, I see that this issue has come up before. If the article is to be about Social security systems then it should be renamed as such. Welfare means wellbeing, but only in the United States does it also mean government financial aid to ensure welfare.--84.250.230.158 (talk) 10:39, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I see that there used to be a more appropriately titled page, [[Welfare (financial aid) (now redirected to Welfare and in the talk there, there seems to be several other people who have made the same observations as I have had, that WELFARE on its own does not mean a financial aid program outside of the United States. Here for example are the comments from that page: (See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Welfare_(financial_aid)&action=edit&section=8)

Could I just point out that the bold opening statement "Welfare is financial assistance paid to people by governments" is incorrect. 'Welfare' in this context is specific to North America. European English (UK & Ireland) uses terms like 'social security' as does Australian English. While we understand what Americans mean by 'welfare' and 'being on the welfare', the use of this word is culture-specific and not simply a global term as the article imples. A simple clarification to point out that this is a north American perspective would help here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Toxteth o'grady (talk • contribs) 13:42, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, the very word welfare has such a vastly different meaning in the US than in, for instance, Finland, I think there should be separate articles (i.e. Welfare in the United States, Welfare in Nordic countries, Welfare in Europe, Welfare in Latin America, etc.). Welfare in Europe would only need a hatnote to indicate the Welfare in Nordic countries article, which is sufficiently distinct to have its own article, as is Welfare in the United States. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 15:44, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

It strikes me that we really must address this problem. I am sure an American editor can come up with an alternative title to plain vanilla Welfare which offends the sensibilities of people in other countries where welfare means WELLBEING.--84.250.230.158 (talk) 19:58, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Usually you can tell from an article's lead what its topic is, and try to make the title reflect that. Here, however, the lead was mangled in this diff of last August to say the welfare is "broad discourse"! If you look what it was before, it seems clear that the topic would be better described as Welfare program, which already redirects here. If somebody has claimed at some point that this topic is WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for Welfare, I'd dispute that. So make a WP:RM and let's fix it. Dicklyon (talk) 20:58, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I still think (as I have indicated in the past) that we need to review the whole series of welfare program related articles with a comprehensive approach, and either make welfare a dab page listing related articles or use summary style where the welfare article sums up and ties together the various branch articles (such as Universal welfare, Welfare in the United States, Welfare in Nordic countries, Welfare in Europe, etc.). The biggest problem I see with the way WP has handled "welfare" to date is that "welfare" is a huge topic with many interpretations (which vary among different countries/regions/cultures) and yet Wikipedia's content has been strongly influenced by the controversial politics of the American welfare system as if that has any bearing on welfare elsewhere in the world. Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 22:21, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I think you're ignoring the point that in most of the world, even though they may be very familiar with welfare states and welfare programs (often by other names), this word just doesn't come across as recognizably conveying those concepts. Dicklyon (talk) 00:43, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Dicklyon, do we disagree in some way? I thought we were both pointing out that the term welfare means dramatically different things in different places outside of the USA, and that the wiki does not seem to reflect a world-wide view of the topic. Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 04:18, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, let's see if we do. Your option to "use summary style where the welfare article sums up and ties together the various branch articles" still contains the ambiguous title welfare, which is the problem I felt you were ignoring; this is not a good title for a summary of welfare programs, any more than it is for an article on such things all together. On the other hand, welfare as a disambiguation page is not a problem. As for whether there's a whole suite of articles needing overhaul, I take no position; I'm just responding to the immediate title question. The simplest first step is to just move it to welfare program, though it's a halfway step, I agree. Dicklyon (talk) 06:12, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

As the person that has seemingly come around to reviving this question again I want to make a few observations about the above comments, and at least one other observation. Firstly. the diff did remove reference to the very different treatment accorded to the meaning of WELFARE in the US verses EUROPE (though as I have found out, Canada does not refer to social programs as WELFARE) but the text before that change still referred to welfare as a social program in Europ but claimed (wrongly IMHO) that the difference between Europe and America was universality. My point is that in Europe, welfare is NOT a social program of ANY KIND. It is a word which means WELLBEING (as in animal welfare, child welfare, the welfare of the elderly etc.). As such, outside of the U.S., the word WELFARE has overwhelmingly positive connotations. The word WELFARE outside the US does not equate at all with social program. The general term used outside the US for a program untended to provide a minimum level of welfare is SOCIAL SECURITY (but unfortunately, this LAST term has a special meaning in the United States, meaning a particular social program providing a pension in the case of old age or disability). Secondly, creating further articles such as Universal welfare, Welfare in the United States, Welfare in Nordic countries, Welfare in Europe, etc.) just exacerbates the problem! Welfare means WELLBEING and only in the US does it also mean social program. In the past there was a welfare sidebar which included linked all the associated articles in which it was placed to articles on communism and socialism, which frankly is ridiculous. It seemed to have been done with the sole intent of further damning the very word WELFARE by association away from its true meaning of WELLBEING.

As to what to do, I think Welfare should be a disambig page with a reference to the two usages of the word and a link to Social security which is a lead-in article to the general topic (with links to national program articles). Those looking for the US program known as social security can easily get to that article from there. I think a disambig page is better than a simple redirect because Welfare does generally mean WELLBEING even though there may not be any articles yet on the subject of wellbeing. There ought to be one I think because it is undoubtedly measured differently in different places.--84.250.230.158 (talk) 05:37, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

More American misunderstandings in the lede to Right to social security. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights did refer to social security but meaning the general security of the person (having a right to provide for themselves and their family) but it certainly did not mean that people have the right to maternity, employment injury, unemployment or old age benefits!!!! It left it to signatories as to how to guarantee this security. How wide is this problem in Wikipedia?????--84.250.230.158 (talk) 06:00, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay, anon, I can see the merit in your approach. I will say that while I was studying in Sweden, I wrote a 10-page comparative essay on "welfare programs" in Sweden, Finland and the United States, and that's what they called it in the class - "welfare programs" - so it's not like Europeans have no inkling of that sense of the word (this was a "Nordic Politics" class at a Swedish college, with a British instructor and mostly European students). While many of the European words for such programs more closely translate as social security or pension and few of them carry the stigma attached to welfare in American usage, most of the English language materials I have seen on European social programs do tend to use the word "welfare". Nevertheless, taking a college course in Europe certainly does not make me an expert on European social programs, and I do see a certain functional elegance in the approach you described above: Welfare should be a disambig page with a reference to the two usages of the word and a link to Social security which is a lead-in article to the general topic (with links to national program articles). I think that may be the most neutral and unambiguous approach. Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | Special:Contributions/Wilhelm_meisx270D; Beiträge) 20:53, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

OK. I will think about the content to be moved over before doing the redirect.

I find it no surprise at all that the term "welfare programs" was understood in a European context because they are programs that are intended to bring about the welfare (or wellbeing) of their citizens. But the single word "welfare" on its own in Europe means "wellbeing" or "doing okay", and not a social program. That's why to me, as a European, the current article title and its content do not align. Brits in common vernacular use term like "being on the dole" or "being on the social" but newspapers and politicians say "living on social security". The gutter press might refer to people who try to defraud the social security system as "welfare cheats" but I think that is headline abbreviation and neither common nor particularly encyclopedic. --84.250.230.158 (talk) 22:19, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

This IP seems to have some linguistic beef with the word "welfare", but nowhere in any of this soapboxing have I seen any indication of an alternative meaning, or indication that, outside of their assertions of "European" usage, (a Finnish IP btw), that the term is used incorrectly. This is a commonly used term, obviously in the U.S., but in Europe as well, and by most English speaking countries. The IP has the burden to prove otherwise. There's clearly some ideological issues at play here as well. Shadowjams (talk) 10:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok. Try this. Google the Australian government web site for the term welfare (i.e. enter "welfare site:australia.gov.au" as the google search term). For every use of the word WELFARE in the hit pages try substitution WELLBEING and then GOVERNMENT AID and see which makes sense. I have done this and it shows that WELL BEING is the meaning of the word and not GOVERNMENT AID. You can do the same for South Africa (gov.za) and the UK government portal (direct.gov.uk). If you find an exception where GOVERNMENT AID fits better than WELL-BEING, do please let us know. --84.250.230.158 (talk) 17:04, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

WELFARE as Financial Aid

I just reverted an edit which added into the article a large tract of information about the United States welfare system. The problem with this is that this is NOT the main meaning of WELFARE in the English speaking world. It is fully understandable that WP users in the United States who understand WELFARE to be social programs will be surprised NOT to see this article discussing this matter. A similar argument at one time affected American readers with the article on corn which redirects to maize, the more common name used outside of the United States. It is for this reason that the disambiguation has been added at the top and the additional section directed at surprised readers in the U.S.

Under WP rules of local English spellings and names. it would be perfectly okay to have an article titled Welfare in the United States and for it to focus on social programs in that country, because welfare id the common term used in that country. However, for a general view of social programs in a global context, the proper place for this is in Social security which is about the general idea of welfare (i.e. wellbeing) in a social context and the systems built to ensure welfare is enjoyed by everyone.

The simple fact is that WP already has too many overlapping articles on this subject and it has been made worse by the language confusions which means that articles may be found under the title welfare and social security. Welfare and social security mean different things to US Americans than they do to Europeans, Asians, Australians, and for all I know South Americans too. Canadians I am sure understand the American usage but it is not the accepted term in their own country. As you can see if you search for Welfare on government websites in those countries what comes back is welfare meaning well-being. Animal Welfare and Child Welfare are examples and hardly any reference to a social program called Welfare. Welfare is the AIM and not the MEANS of social programs in most countries outside the U.S.

I have only just scratched the surface of this problem within WP but it has clearly been raised before if you read the history on the Discussion page. This article really ought to deal with the issue of Welfare (the objective of the social programs) and how it is measured and defined. It is absolutely impossible to do so if the article continues to treat welfare as meaning something quite different. I would be curious to know how it came to be that WELFARE SUPPORT became just known as WELFARE in the U.S. because it seems that Americans have lost sight of the object of WELFARE as WELL BEING. --84.250.230.158 (talk) 23:58, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Same issue as the thread above. Let's keep it to one thread. Shadowjams (talk) 10:31, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Article's been essentially rewritten

I didn't realize how extensive the 84. IP has rewritten this article. I first came across this as part of Huggle patrolling because huge swaths of it were being removed. I didn't realize how large these were. This article was whittled from a 43k document about the general concept and its application around the world, to a 3k article of 4 paragraphs.

The IPs ideas about what the term welfare means are synthesis or original research at best. While it's quite acceptable to discuss that the term may vary across countries, the IP has tried to rework the article about this concept into a discussion of what he/she thinks the word welfare means. This is not a dictionary.

I didn't appreciate the scale of this change before, and that it's kept going since I last looked.

This is simply unacceptable.

• This is the initial changes the IP made
• This was what was done after the initial discussion.

I'm going to be bold and revert this back to what it was, and then readd the new sections the IP added about the name. I'm sorry if this catches other, useful, intermediate edits in the path. I'll try to add those back as well. Shadowjams (talk) 15:27, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Part of that series of previous edits included moving sections of this artcile into Social programs in the United States. I'm perfectly fine with that idea, although it needs to be done in a much more restrained manner, not the wholesale slashing of this article.

But if I read the impetus behind this correctly, it's that there are some uniquely American features covered here. As the IP was told eariler, WP:Requested Moves is the right place to deal with this. We shouldn't be rewriting a whole topic (a rather notable one). It is possibly though to keep the current article's meaning though, while making it more international. So, with that in mind, I'll try to incoroporate most of the history into the U.S. specific article. Shadowjams (talk) 15:38, 21 April (UTC)

The changes may be large but I did discuss them on the talk page and I did put most of the important history section into the other article which appeared quite comprehensive but lacking any historical context. But the general principle of the move is right. This article is about WELFARE and in most countries of the world that means WELL-BEING. That being so it was wrong for the article to be about a completely different subject.

If you can demonstrate by some logical means that there are other countries that officially use the term welfare on its own to mean "government support" I would be please to be corrected. But as I say, I went to Australian, South African, Canadian and more recently to the irish government portal and in none of these is it possible to substitute the term "government financial aid" for the word "welfare" and with it making any sense. I daresay if you look hard enough you will find some ordinary people who might use it in the American way (as a short hand way of saying "welfare system") and some newspapers, but I would venture to say that you will not find any official government websites using it that way and if you look carefully you will find that it is much more common to speak of "benefit fraud" instead of "welfare fraud". Is this OR? Not in the WP sense because I am not citing it as expert citation in any article. But if we get together a collection of WP editors whose mother tongue is British English, Australian English, South African English, Irish English etc.. I think they will tell you that what I am saying is correct. Doing counts of Google Searches and testing (as I did above) whether the word WELFARE stands up to substitution is a pretty good indicator that what I am saying is correct. There is nothing WRONG with the American usage of saying WELFARE instead of WELFARE SYSTEM. Its just not normative in most countries and that is quite easy to verify. We can do the hard way (by getting together some editors as I have suggested) or the doubters can simply do the tests I have suggested to discover if what I am saying is correct. And I do not want anyone to DISTORT what I am saying. Its not that people outside the U.S. do not understand American usage . its just that we mostly do not use it ourselves. And that is why I think it is best that an article dedicated to the title WELFARE should be about what WELFARE is in most countries. That is WELL-BEING and how it is defined and used. The American usage is valid and should be discussed, but it should NOT dominate the article (as per Wikipedia policy).

I was looking today at the article Individual mandate. Every government law mandates all or some of us to do something - pay out taxes on time, insure our motor vehicles, ensure our kids are educated, arrange for our garbage to be collected.... but instead this article is focussed almost 100% on a tiny section of one U.S. law !!!! If you want to be useful you can go and tell those guys editing that article that they are abusing WP!!! I am only trying to follow WP policy by making this article chiefly about the subject of WELFARE (which means WELL-BEING) in most countries of the world. I am happy to take this to dispute resolution if you like.--84.250.230.158 (talk) 17:04, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

The conceptual impasse here is that you're thinking of this as though it were a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. There are things, concepts, nouns, etc., that have different meanings in different regions or styles of English. That's a long understood part of Wikipedia. We have policies to deal with that. Often, when there's no other clear choice, the first meaning is adopted. That's the case with Maize. The discussion about that, if you're interested, is at Talk:Corn (disambiguation)#Fix the corn - maize mess.

That's essentially what's going on here. You're asserting, (and I'm not sure the sources back you up on this... but let's assume for a moment they do) that because the American term "welfare" means means-tested social assistance, but the other English speakers use it to mean general welfare (not sure if this is more than a dictionary definition), or Welfare as in Welfare State (which we have an article for), then this page should be changed.

Your use of individual mandate is particularly apt. As far as I know, that term is not used regularly in political discourse in other countries, and if there are examples of it, those are massively overshadowed by its use in the U.S. That's why "individual mandate" is entirely appropriate for that article. If there is confusion about its usage, then that's what hatnotes are for, or in extreme cases, disambiguation.

Wham! can also mean a sound, but we have a different target for it.

The appropriate way to do that is this: 1) You need to provide sources that there are these divergent versions of the term "welfare" in contemporary use. 2) You then need to say why that new usage should be preferred over the current one. If there's consensus on both of those things, then we'll move the article that's here to some other name, and then create a new "Welfare" article that covers the meaning you're discussing. Or perhaps create a Welfare disambiguation page that then points to one of these two articles.

The answer is never though to wipe out the previous article. Shadowjams (talk) 00:02, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Shadowjams (talk) approach here is in keeping with Wikipedia's goals, policies, guidelines, and best benefits all the readers. This approach keep the text before the person using IP 84.250.230.158 (talk) modified this article, while working toward adding text with WP:RS that showed the non-American variants in the use of the term Welfare. This new text could include a general paragraph/section, as well as adds to each country's/region's sections, IF and only if WP:RS can be found to support the adds.

The person using IP 84.250.230.158 (talk) support for their changes is WP:OR, which is not allowed here on Wikipedia. Lentower (talk) 11:14, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

This is complete nonsense. Just look at the article's history!!

• June 2003 Article created by User:Vroman expressing strong POV against the concept of social welfare
• Nov 2003 Article changed to a disambiguation page in which the meaning of WELLBEING is stated and the alternative meaning in the UNITED STATES is given.
• For SIX WHOLE YEARS the article remains as essentially the same disambiguation page with a manin meaning and a loal meaning until
• Aug 2009 when this verion undoes this. Note : User:Stephen Bain has a long history of being blocked for his editing.

I am not doing some terrible change to the article or acting outside policy. It is not WP:OR to have given published dictionary references, one showing that WELFARE did not mean government aid for the the poor in 1913 and another showing that the meaning of government aid to the needy is predominantly North American English. Why don't you criticize the user who removed those valid references?--84.250.230.158 (talk) 10:58, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

My reply to the editor using the IP 84.250.230.158 questions at User_talk:Lentower#English_language_dispute_at_the_article_Welfare is also sufficient answer here. I'll add that this editor does not understand that the way they used the citations they added is WP:OR, and doesn't follow that policy. Also that the length of time something is on Wikipedia, has nothing to do with whether it's following WP's goals, policies and guidelines, and whether it can be improved. Lentower (talk) 12:09, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Shadowjams two part approach

Shadowjams two part approach is sensible. We do need to identify whether there is a main usage of the term and then we need to choose the most appropriate title.

Part 1 Sources for welfare as mainly "wellbeing with "welfare payment" as a secondary, mainly U.S. English interpretation

The Oxford Dictionary

1. "health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group"
2. "chiefly North American financial support given to those who are unemployed or otherwise in need

The Longman dictionary

1. "health and happiness"
2. "help for people with personal or social problems" (welfare benefits, welfare services, welfare programs etc)
3. American English. "money paid by government to the poor or unemployed"

The Macmillan dictionary

1. the health and happiness of people or good care
   1. good care and living conditions for animals
2. care provided by the state or another organization for people in need
   1. Mainly American money given to people who do not have work or who are in need. (The usual British word is benefit)

The searches I made at government websites on the word welfare did not generally bring back references to government financial support.

The fact is that if you search for "welfare" as a term in Australian and South African web sites, what comes back are references to Animal Welfare and Child Welfare, which are all examples of the meaning WELLBEING and thus indicative that the original meaning is predominant in those countries. --84.250.230.158 (talk) 17:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

This fails WP:OR. In particular, WP:PSTS and WP:SYN. You need to find several secondary and/or tertiary sources that make your point.

You could try adding a sentence or a paragraph using these primary sources, but it would have to include Shadowjams's counter-examples below, from his and your's discussion on his talk page.

The way you have used search engines also fails WP:SET. Among other points this one is important to understand: WP:SET#Search_engine_limitations_.E2.80.93_technical_notes.Lentower (talk) 06:57, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Part 2 Which meaning is more significant and what should be the title?

I think the dictionary definitions already answer that question. I think more to the point is that we should find a more neutral title. I am not against an article about government programs for the poor having the word welfare in the title because that is clearly one of the meanings. My contention is welfare on its own really does mostly mean WELLBEING outside the United States and connections to government assistance only comes when the word is used with others to complete that meaning, as in Welfare State, Welfare payment, social welfare etc. Except of course, as the dictionaries tell us, in the US welfare can mean financial aid. But that is not global usage. Which is is why I argue that the welfare article OUGHT to be a disambiguation page so that the main topic of "government financial aid for the poor" is held in a more appropriately titled page. Here we do hit another problem because social security is also ambiguous, and as I discovered looking through the dictionaries and government web sites, different countries have different terms for this and Wikipedia has at times reflected this. See for example Social security, Social protection, Social welfare provision (as it was before User:Stephen Bain re.directed it to his modified version of Welfare or Welfare (financial aid) (as it was before User:Stephen Bain redirected it). Personally I would be happy if the article about welfare as government aid was in the article Welfare (financial aid) and that Welfare was much as it was before Stephen Bain altered it. As I see it, that was very similar to the version I produced a few days ago. The title does not seem to be at all ambiguous and anyone looking for the subject will quickly find it. As I pointed out earlier, Bain does seem to have been a troublesome editor in the past.

What do the others think? --84.250.230.158 (talk) 17:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Summary: Bad idea.

I'm going to copy over some of what I wrote on my talk page in response to 84... I'd be better if you kept this discussion in one place 84... instead of carrying out the issue on everybody's talk pages separately.

"Welfare" is not an exclusively North American term. Supposedly Churchill coined the term saying "welfare not warfare." It was used first by the British, not in the U.S. See also Social welfare in Japan, Social programs in Canada#Usage, Italian welfare state, Social welfare in Sweden... there are others.

A Welfare (disambiguation) page hatnoted from Welfare would be fine, if there are sufficient articles that could be confused with Welfare and otherwise meet the MOSDAB criteria.

The ENGVAR point and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is that when there are multiple uses of a word, the first "style" used in an article, or the first use of the word as an article title, is preferred, unless there are strong reasons otherwise. In this case "welfare" describes means tested government assistance around the world and the article's been describing that since 2003. You're asking to shift the meaning of a highly read article (averages around 1,500 per day) dramatically.

As I said before, first, prove the word "welfare" is so unreasonably out of context for commonwealth speakers that they would be astounded when they find this usage, and not the one you prefer, then demonstrate that "welfare" as meaning general well-being, or whatever way you're using it, is sufficiently notable to warrant a standalone article. If all of those criteria are met, then we can go to WP:Requested Moves and consider rearranging the order of these articles. Shadowjams (talk) 22:19, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I again concur with what Shadowjams has written just above. Especially: "I'd be better if you kept this discussion in one place 84... instead of carrying out the issue on everybody's talk pages separately." I made the same point on my talk page in response to the editor using IP 84.250.230.158.

Editing on Wikipedia is NOT about making an editor happy.
It's about producing encyclopedic content that meets WP's goals, policies, and guidelines.

To prove your contentions would take a lot of work to produce the equivalent of an academic paper that references many reliable sources from most, if not all, English speaking countries. That would pass muster in a peer-reviewed journal, as well as meet WP's goals, policies, and guidelines. Or the equivalent of finding sufficient secondary and/or tertiary reliable sources. Providing a few primary sources does not meet WP's goals, policies, and guidelines.

Though the USA is just one of over 50 English speaking countries, it has about a seventh of the English speaking people in those countries.

At this moment, there are 33 redirects to this article: http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/rdcheck.py?page=Welfare. This means care has to be taken that any reader who follows one of those redirects, find sufficient text and links to enable the reader to find the information the reader is seeking. Lentower (talk) 06:57, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

User:Shadowjams makes a lot of points. Let me answer them in turn

• "Welfare" is not an exclusively North American term. Supposedly Churchill coined the term saying "welfare not warfare." It was used first by the British, not in the U.S. See also Social welfare in Japan, Social programs in Canada#Usage, Italian welfare state, Social welfare in Sweden... there are others.´´

• • The above distorts my position. I have never said "welfare" is an exclusively North American term, but that its main meaning is "WELL BEING" and through that meaning it became attached to terms such as social welfare, welfare state because these things are about "social well-being" and a "state in which everyone enjoys wellbeing". I did say that welfare on its own does not mean "government aid" outside the U.S., meaning welfare is usually used as an attribute attached to another word such as "welfare assistance" with the meaning "assistance to achieve wellbeing". Clearly, in the U.S. terms such as "welfare to work" and "welfare fraud" emerged which shifted the meaning there (because "well-being to work" and "well-being fraud" are otherwise nonsensical". Churchill would never have meant "government payments to the poor not warfare" because he led the Conservative Party which opposed the Labour Party policy to implement a welfare state (and lost the 1945 election because of it). Churchill's usage is much more sensible when it is understood as "wellbeing not warfare" because welfare *(as well-being) is a good thing and warfare generally is best avoided. "Jaw jaw not war war" was the more famous Churchill quote on this subject.

• A Welfare (disambiguation) page hatnoted from Welfare would be fine, if there are sufficient articles that could be confused with Welfare and otherwise meet the MOSDAB criteria.
  • You are simply burying your head in the sand by arguing that Welfare should be about its North American meaning. That is against WP policy against local use of that terminology in anything other than articles about the topic in that locality. What's wrong with Welfare (financial aid) with the Welfare page giving the main meaning and its local meaning as supported by dictionary references?

• The ENGVAR point and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is that when there are multiple uses of a word, the first "style" used in an article, or the first use of the word as an article title, is preferred, unless there are strong reasons otherwise. In this case "welfare" describes means tested government assistance around the world and the article's been describing that since 2003. You're asking to shift the meaning of a highly read article (averages around 1,500 per day) dramatically.

• • WP:PRIMARYTOPIC tells us to focus on usage and long term significance and ENGVAR says we should NOT prefer one national variation over another. IMHO (and this is supported by the dictionaries) the main meaning usage of welfare is "wellbeing" and that has meant this for thousands of years, EXCEPT in the United States where another meaning has emerged in the last 70 years or so. How is changing the article title back to Welfare (financial aid) and making Welfare to a disambig page "shifting the meaning"? It is simply honoring the traditional meaning of "welfare" which it retains in most countries including the United States and allowing readers to easily find the topic as financial aid. You seem to be ignoring this suggestion which to me seems eminently sensible and compliant with policy.

• As I said before, first, prove the word "welfare" is so unreasonably out of context for commonwealth speakers that they would be astounded when they find this usage, and not the one you prefer, then demonstrate that "welfare" as meaning general well-being, or whatever way you're using it, is sufficiently notable to warrant a standalone article. If all of those criteria are met, then we can go to WP:Requested Moves and consider rearranging the order of these articles.

• • Well I have suggested ways we can do this and I have tried and it proves my point. But all that happens is that I have had thrown back in my face accusations of WP:OR and WP:POV. Here is a suggestion. We need to get more opinions from other users whose English is not primarily North American. How about if we find articles about social welfare systems in other countries like for instance Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain, Ireland and get opinions from editors that edit those articles? We can summarize our issues (we cannot ask them to read this whole section). I'd suggest we ask them to choose between two options. The first being Welfare article being about WELFARE AS FINANCIAL AID with a hatnote to Welfare (disambiguation) (i.e. Shadowjams suggestion) and the second being Welfare written as a disambig page with WELFARE AS FINANCIAL AID being written into an article Welfare (financial aid) (i.e. the IP 84 user's suggestion).

What do you think about this idea? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.250.230.158 (talk) 09:56, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Please be courteous and remember to sign your posts!!! Sinebot doesn't catch all missing signatures.

Duplicating large blocks of text to respond to them point by point is regarded as a discourteous here on WP - it makes all readers of this section in the future re-read, or at least take the added time to distinguish what they have already read from what is new. The courteous thing to do is to copy the signature at the bottom of the block to the end of each sub-block you wish to respond to. Then at the end of each point, indent and sign your response. I did this above with your response to Shadowjams two part approach. Could you be courteous and do this now? Lentower (talk) 15:20, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Your responses here mostly repeat arguments you have already made, while not showing an increased understanding of WP's goals, policies, and guidelines.

The best solution to this dispute would be for you to find secondary and/or tertiary reliable sources, and use them to improve the current article. The article needs much work, much content development. Wouldn't our time as editors be better spent developing and improving content of all articles, than trying to find the perfect title for this article?

The canvassing you propose has a number of potential pitfalls. Why not use one of the established procedures for issues like this, as Shadowjams suggested above. WP:CANVASS shows some of the pitfalls. Making sure the editors contacted are not a biased sample is one of the pitfalls, and the way you suggest could introduce bias. It is customary when this is done your way, to also give notice of the canvass on the User Talk page of each editor who has edited the article. It is also customary to contact a wide variety of editors. Summaries aren't used. Something like this is used: There is a dispute about the proper title of Welfare. It would help build consensus, if you review and discuss the dispute to help generate consensus at Talk:Welfare#Wrong title. ~~~~

The dictionaries you have used in WP:OR as primary sources, are inherently biased for the assertion you are making. All three of them are edited in England, only one of the 50 plus countries where English is a major language. Mostly by college educated people, who are not even widely representative of all people using English in England.

The government web sites you have searched have these issues:

• Governments often create titles for programs for political purposes, that are not the phrase their citizens would choose. That is, trying to use a government web site to prove what the usage is for those governed is not conclusive.
• You have only checked a handful of the 50 plus countries. You need to do around half for your research to become credible, and get beyond personal knowledge.
• Australia is one of the web sites you have claimed to check. Australia is a federation of states, where each state has significantly more power than they do in the USA. That is, perform a larger share of the governing. So to properly do this WP:OR you would have to check these state's web sites as well. This expands the websites that need to be checked to hundreds.
• Many web site searches do not check affiliated web sites. That is, the main national web site might NOT search the web sites of the departments/agencies/etc. that actually provide welfare. So you have to find all of the relevant web sites for a governement and check then. This expands the websites that need to be checked to thousands.

On our user talk pages, you asked Shadowjams and me five questions. Shadowjams did you the courtesy of answering then one-by-one. I did you the courtesy of answering them in general. In the this section I have asked you several questions. In the next section, I have asked you three questions. In the spirit of co-operation and understanding,[2] could you please do us the courtesy of answering them? (This is one of the questions.) Lentower (talk) 15:20, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

User 84.250.230.158 is a new editor

Special:Contributions/84.250.230.158 and http://toolserver.org/~luxo/contributions/contributions.php?user=84.250.230.158&blocks=true show that the editor(s?) using that IP have done just over 200 edits in less than five months. Inexperienced compared to the many years and thousands of edits of Shadowjams, me, and many other editors commenting here. Lentower (talk) 16:07, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

But I do know that WELFARE means in most contexts and it means WELL BEING. Its the origin of the term Welfare State from which we get Welfare payments etc. It is only in America where Welfare on its own means the same as Welfare System. And it actually offends my ear to hear its meaning turned upside down in this way. What is wrong with titling the present article as Welfare (financial aid) as it used to be and making Welfare a disambiguation page? --84.250.230.158 (talk) 17:48, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Personal knowledge, by itself, can NOT be used to create or modify a Wikipedia article.
You have yet to meet Wikipeida's policies in proving your assertions.

Have you read WP:V? If yes, please show us how that allows what you did and are trying to do.

Have you read WP:OR? If yes, please show us how that allows what you did and are trying to do.

Have you read WP:NPOV? If yes, please show us how that allows what you did and are trying to do. Lentower (talk) 06:08, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

I could answer your questions but before doing so will ask you the courtesy of answering mine that I posed above "what is wrong with titling...etc." and those I posed at your talk page. What you are trying to say is that I am wrong but you are right, but your answers are just nebulous. Yes I have read V and have given you dictionary definitions that show the meaning is secondary and particular to the U.S. That is not OR but V compliant. And in my opinion the article name breaches POV. Calling the social safety net WELFARE is an American POV. I am trying to understand why you are so strongly opposed to re-titling the present article to Welfare (financial aid). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.250.230.158 (talk) 08:15, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Please honor the many #REDIRECT [[]] to this article.

At this moment, there are 33 redirects to this article: http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/rdcheck.py?page=Welfare. This means care has to be taken that any reader who follows one of those redirects, find sufficient text and links to enable the reader to find the information the reader is seeking. Lentower (talk) 06:57, 25 April 2012 (UTC)