Defining the state
The role of government intervention in the economy is perhaps the starkest difference between the candidates
"Mr Obama has allowed states to use unemployment-insurance money to subsidise employment and training, and has offered them waivers on welfare rules if they can improve the odds of beneficiaries finding work. He has also proposed a “Universal Displaced Worker Programme” to streamline training and employment services and offer stipends to workers changing careers, looking for jobs, or taking pay cuts, though he seldom mentions it.
Mr Romney would consolidate the many federal training and employment-assistance programmes and hand responsibility for most to the states. He would also encourage states to create personal re-employment accounts for the unemployed, analogous to his proposed private Social Security accounts or Medicare vouchers, which would allow them to spend money on retraining or education as they see fit. He has criticised Mr Obama for creating an “entitlement society” that punishes work and initiative, and mischaracterised his welfare waivers as loosening the requirement that recipients must find work. All in all, Mr Romney’s plans in these policy areas imply a very different, if not yet fully defined, prescription."
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