The Story of A-Town and B-Ville is parable of how two different towns suffering from high unemployment rates due to a recession, are handling giving government funds to families to help them live in this tough time. A-Town calls those funds welfare payments, but to ensure that families due not take the money for granted or lose their moral character, the town makes receiving and qualifying for those payments difficult and embarrassing. The thought behind this was to encourage people to be grateful for the help, and quickly find work to get away from the welfare payments. Whereas, B-Ville called their payments insurance claims, and portrayed it as these people, by working and contributing to the community, have earned the right to this money
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The things they know are: the high rate of unemployment due to a recent recession, and city officials believe there is enough work out there if you look hard enough. They then make the inference that if these families are given government funds for food and bills; they will become lazy and relax their job hunting efforts, and be ungrateful for the aid provided to them. So, in order to circumvent the problem of unemployed people slacking in their job search efforts, the town decided to make the government welfare payments difficult and embarrassing to come by. However, this backfired and make the people more ungrateful for the funds, and even further distressed and frustrated than …show more content…
However, B-Ville uses words with built-in judgements to make people feel better about a bad situation. Instead of A-Town’s “welfare payments”, B-Ville calls their payments “insurance claims”. The term “welfare”, carries the connotation that aid is given to needy families that cannot help themselves. Whereas, the term “insurance claim” has the connotation that people are merely making a claim against what they have paid into, and by right, they are truly entitled to it, it isn’t a hand-out. To further solidify this concept, the community came out with much ceremony I’m sure to thank the people for their contribution to the community, and wish them well in the turmoil ahead. This helped the needy families feel that they are only receiving what they have put into the community, and therefore, have earned this
The things they know are: the high rate of unemployment due to a recent recession, and city officials believe there is enough work out there if you look hard enough. They then make the inference that if these families are given government funds for food and bills; they will become lazy and relax their job hunting efforts, and be ungrateful for the aid provided to them. So, in order to circumvent the problem of unemployed people slacking in their job search efforts, the town decided to make the government welfare payments difficult and embarrassing to come by. However, this backfired and make the people more ungrateful for the funds, and even further distressed and frustrated than …show more content…
However, B-Ville uses words with built-in judgements to make people feel better about a bad situation. Instead of A-Town’s “welfare payments”, B-Ville calls their payments “insurance claims”. The term “welfare”, carries the connotation that aid is given to needy families that cannot help themselves. Whereas, the term “insurance claim” has the connotation that people are merely making a claim against what they have paid into, and by right, they are truly entitled to it, it isn’t a hand-out. To further solidify this concept, the community came out with much ceremony I’m sure to thank the people for their contribution to the community, and wish them well in the turmoil ahead. This helped the needy families feel that they are only receiving what they have put into the community, and therefore, have earned this