The Jobs Are Gone, But This State's Welfare Recipients Just Keep Coming

[The old mills that ubiquitiously dot the countryside are all abandoned and so are the jobs. Just last week one of those long abandoned brass mills collapsed under the weight of its slate roof when the vibrations from a passing train just proved more than the structure could take. But the welfare recipients just keep coming, because America's streets are still paved with gold. Just for them by the state's generous politicians.

Stone is heavy, natch, and when a goodly part of, or most of the weight is located at the top of the structure, thats what usually happens. And when the state bequeaths top heavy benefits, guess whats eventually going to happen to the state? Its hard for Democratic politicians to resist the appeals from its constituents for ever more largesse, after all, Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) uttered a mouthful when he said "There's plenty of money out there. The Government just doesn't have its hands on it (yet!)"

Recall the scene from the movie "Ghost Busters" when in the NYC Mayors office Bill Murray advises the city's Mayor to "Think of all the voters"]

"In Connecticut, a mother with two children participating in seven major welfare programs (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, housing assistance, utility assistance and free commodities) could receive a package of benefits worth $38,761, the fourth highest in the nation. Only Hawaii, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia provided more generous benefits.

When it comes to gauging the value of welfare benefits, it is important to remember that they are not taxed, while wages are. In fact, in some ways, the highest marginal tax rates anywhere are not for millionaires, but for someone leaving welfare and taking a job.

Therefore, a mother with two children in Connecticut would have to earn $21.33 per hour for her family to be better off than they would be on welfare. That's more than the average entry-level salary for a teacher or secretary. In fact, it is more than 107 percent of Connecticut's median salary.

Let's not forget the additional costs that come with going to work, such as child care, transportation and clothing. Even if the final income level remains unchanged, an individual moving from welfare to work will perceive some form of loss: a reduction in leisure as opposed to work.

That's not to say welfare recipients in Connecticut are lazy — they aren't. But they're not stupid, either. Surveys of welfare recipients consistently show their desire for a job. There is also evidence, however, that many are reluctant to accept available employment opportunities. Despite the work requirements included in the 1996 welfare reform, only 24 percent of adult welfare recipients in Connecticut are working in unsubsidized jobs, while roughly 41 percent are involved in the broader definition of work participation, which includes activities such as job search and training.

We shouldn't blame welfare recipients. By not working, they are simply responding rationally to the incentive systems our public policy-makers have established.

Of course, not every welfare recipient meets the study's profile, and many who do don't receive all the benefits listed. (On the other hand, some receive even more.) Still, what is undeniable is that for many recipients — particularly "long-term" dependents — welfare pays substantially more than an entry-level job.

In a Connecticut recipient's short-term cost-benefit analysis, choosing welfare over work makes perfect sense. But it may hurt them over the long term because one of the most important steps toward avoiding or getting out of poverty is a job. In fact, just 2.6 percent of full-time workers are poor, compared with 23.9 percent of adults who do not work.

Even though many anti-poverty activists decry low-wage jobs, starting at a minimum wage job can be a springboard out of poverty. And while it would be nice to raise the wages of entry-level service workers, government has no ability to do so. (Study after study shows that mandated wage increases result in increased unemployment for the lowest skilled workers)."

http://touch.courant.com/#section/2225/article/p2p-77006569/

 

Standing in the prescription pick up line to pick up her birth control prescription, the thirteen year old female welfare recipient, holding her welfare card aloft in her hands, turns to her eighteen year old boyfriend and wonders aloud if she could "Pay for her pictures with this card?"

Today, that wouldn't even be a question. You can use your EBT card to pay for lap dances or even get a cash advance in Atlantic City or Las Vegas. Hey! "No Pain, no gain" Right?

Years later, same city, another eighteen year old female welfare recipient, while waiting for her three prescription abortion cocktail from the planned parenthood clinic to be prepared, announces she's buying this particular toy for her five year old son.

 

Can you say, Cloward-Piven?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward–Piven_strategy


Working exactly to design spec.

So what's your complaint?

-

 

lol yeah saw a clip of him saying that

actually here it is

The Cancer of Progressivism
[video=youtube;UUygx8QU_sQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUygx8QU_sQ&list=PLYcuLAArq58TkE-Lo-KVkHbrPN0xzHgyV&index=62[/video]

 

This is the problem when common available jobs barely pay more than it takes to live on.

Please think about that for a moment, don't just brush over it.

Consider for a moment the possibility that maybe, just maybe there is something wrong when all these jobs barely pay enough to live on. Now, I'm not advocating any type of minimum wage increase or jobs program or anything like that, but I am just saying something is fundamentally wrong with the economy. Maybe it is just too many people that were let in to the country. When you have too many people, that can drive down wages, and then you can't artificially increase wages without leaving many of these people unemployed.

So what do you think people are going to do? What would any rational person do? Take a job, a job that pays little more than it takes to live on, one that they could potentially lose at any time and find themselves evicted and kicked out on the streets, or accept a steady secure income from welfare that pays 80-90% of what they would be paid from the job they could find? Sounds to me the responsible thing might be to take the welfare, in many situations. Many of these low level jobs do not have very secure employment, the employees are not valued at all, and the employer could fire them for all sorts of minor little reasons. I think things were likely particularly bad in the recession the last 7-8 years.

I have sometimes wondered, if there were not all these people on welfare, and taxes were lower, perhaps there would be more and better jobs because businesses and people would be less burdened by taxes in the first place. That is, maybe taking from some people to provide for other people, when there does not seem to be enough for everyone, is rather counterproductive. I am not sure, and I realize this is a multi-faceted issue.

Many conservatives put the blame on welfare, but that is actually only a small part of the problem compared to the rest of bloated government. All those federal employees employed in departments that are not essential, and excessive government regulations that take too much money to enforce. And then there are all the government contractors, many people do not think about that. If progressives are corrupt with their ranks of surplus government employees, it is conservatives who are corrupt with all their government contracts that go to private companies. This represents a huge part of the economy, many people do not even realize. It almost seems that the only decent paying careers left are the ones with large corporations that are contractors for the government. Something is wrong with this picture when the economy is like this.

I am not even going to say that this high level of government spending has to necessarily be a bad thing, but if the level is going to be this high, it is very important to carefully consider how and where all this money is spent. And then there are all the unfunded government mandates, which are really akin to more government spending in disguise, when the government requires people to do things but does not pay for it.

All this bloating sucks wealth out of the private economy. You want to create decent-paying government jobs for people since the jobs in the private sector are not so good, but where is this money coming from? Is it really solving the underlying problem? Welfare is only a small part of problem here. These are important issues that need to be discussed.

 

Sure seems like you agree, we don't need anymore immigration

 

Over zealous laws have contributed to the failing of most minority communities in the US. Our Felon Factory system of justice (built on the strong Christian foundation that the only thing you need to get high on is Jesus) creates felons at a rate no community could overcome. Take away a persons ability to work by making a felon out of them and you have an insured welfare system.

 

We have a compound problem with no economic strategy or tool to deal with. Americans are overwhelmed in the aggregate with household debt so growing amounts of their non-growing income goes to service their debt interest, leaving less to procure goods and services. There's no mechanism to forgive mass amounts of debt across an entire economy and there's no tool at the Fed to address what happens when jobs decline because consumer spending drops by the forces of the banking industry consuming excess amounts of money from the economy as a result of too much household debt.

How we fix this is anyone's guess, but if the numbers of people receiving government assistance were to decrease, it'd be because something happened to induce consumer spending across the economy. Right now there's nothing out there that can do that. Until we spend more, we don't need more people working, which means growing numbers of people take benefits just to get by, and that number is growing partly because of growing numbers of illegals who won't find jobs paying well enough to make working even worth the effort.

 

I wasn't aware that our system made people break the law.

How does that work exactly?

Do you wake up one day and say, "damn, the system is saying I need to go break the law and get sent to prison."?

Some of you guys make me laugh.