Perhaps it is working, I don't know. It's a sincere question.If I've got to subsidize four inner city moms in order to help their kids graduate high school and gain meaningful employment so they can pay taxes into the system rather than suck down funds through incarceration, it's a fucking bargain whatever it costs.
Is this how it works? Are those kids growing up educated, exiting the welfare system, and paying back in to the system that benefited them?
Thought experiment time! Say you have 100 kids in an inner city school. You (Personally, some government org, charitable group) have resources, you think, to appropriately feed, clothe, transport, and educate them through high school. You follow up with them 1 year after, 5 years after, and 10 years after, and see how many of them are employed, how much they make, how much gets paid 'back' into the system. What if after 10 years, only half of them are employed? Less? What if most only have part time employment? What if only one kid has any meaningful job after 10 years, but he's a high paid (And assuming incredibly charitable) executive who donates orders of magnitude more than it cost to help him get to that position? It's a hard thing to establish a metric for.Is this how it works? Are those kids growing up educated, exiting the welfare system, and paying back in to the system that benefited them?
It's not really a sincere "question" though - it's a whole line of questioning that forms the fundamental liberal/conservative battle over social programs. You're really talking about lower-case-w welfare vs. prisons. I think, just like capitalism vs. socialism, the answer is somewhere in the middle, that answer entirely different depending on culture and entirely up to debate every time there's an election.