welfare vs wages
 

http://news.msn.com/us/govt-aid-pays...b-in-35-states

i know there's been a perception that welfare might actually pay better than a job....well, guess what?



however:

States have varying limits on the length of eligibility for welfare benefits, but most top out at 60 months in a lifetime.

http://news.msn.com/politics/house-p...elfare-waivers


the above article was linked below the one i opened the thread with....i missed that gem back in march.
the house repubs were fighting to ban waivers for welfare--waivers that not one state applied for. go house repubs, go!
to date, 40 votes to repeal obamacare, and 0 jobs bills. there was a know nothing party in our history. the current house should all be labelled the do nothing party, regardless of party affiliation.

I look forward to the Iraq contractor cash missing in this thread as well. Just change the subject when the meme is not what you like.

Though the article points out that the study assumes that every family is receiving every single program offered, and combined the value of all those programs to get the stats, whereas eligibility for individual programs may vary- a family may qualify for one program, but not another.

That said, even $15/hr is not going to make anyone rich. That equals an income of just over $31,000 a year. For a family of six, that's still under the national poverty line.

And the national minimum wage is $7.25/hr. Which comes out to an income just over $15,000 a year. For a family of 2, that's under the poverty line.

I think I've touted it here before, but Barbara Ehrenrich's Nickeled and Dimed, about her attempt to live on a minimum-wage job, is really interesting and a very good read.

No one said that a life of welfare is going to be rich and famous Nicole, the point is it shouldn't keep you from wanting to work. The incentives are backwards which is why it continues to go through the roof.

here, dell, this is for you.

no one is talking about someone 'getting rich'. i get that people need help-but should the amount of help be higher than what can be earned by working? if so, why work? many people won't get rich working either...

that said, i'm all for raising the minimum wage. it's funny, the other day, i saw the clips of neil cavuto discussing his first job, and his wage at that time. adjustments over the years from what he'd made, means the current min. wage should be $10 an hour.
now, i get why they have a fed. minimum. however, this is an issue with doing things on a federal basis. what you can live on in one area isn't close to what you can live on elsewhere.
the current atmosphere in the fast food industry points to serious issues as well. as the govt has ramped up it's assistance, businesses are taking more profits for themselves. mcdonalds alone showed what, $5 billion in profits.
so, just imagine if employers paid a living wage, and the amount of assistance could be cut dramatically. but no, the rich get theirs, and the rest of us support a bloated mess.
what would businesses save in taxes? what would taxpayers save? the system is skewed.
the rich have had their taxes cut repeatedly, they are a former shadow of what they once were. where are the jobs that they're supposed to be creating with their savings? we're in worse shape than ever.

I'm sorry; I wasn't accusing you of anything; just pointing out that the Cato institute was making some pretty big assumptions in their reporting of the stats (as you know, I have a perpetual bug up my bottom about accuracy in the media) and that welfare is likely even less than they are assuming. I agree with you that work should be more financially rewarding than welfare, and it's incredibly effed up in this nation that a 40-hour-a-week minimum wage job won't put a single woman and her child above the poverty line.

The other crazy thing about part-time low-wage jobs like fast food is that it's incredibly difficult for people working them to even get a second job because they are kept on-call (for no money, of course), and expected to be available at the employer's discretion. I'm not necessarily opposed to jobs that do that, but holy cow, they should be paying the employee enough to make up for losing any sort of personal time. A job flipping burgers is not worth that.

I worked fast food as a teenager, and I remember the schedule was done a week in advance and you never knew when you would be working. How on earth is an adult supposed to apply for a second job when they don't know what their hours will be two weeks in the future?

And absolutely I agree with you about the minimum wage needing to be raised. We are a consumer-based economy. If the large working class does not have money to spend, we all suffer.

i didn't take anything as an accusation, so no worries. :D

yeah, it seems many have forgotten what henry ford always thought and worked by, pay your employees enough that they can afford to buy the product they're making.
thing is, people like to look down their noses at people in fast food, or other service industries...but-we use those places, we need those places. that's like sneering at the garbage collector. hello, if it weren't for him, we'd be toting our own stinky stuff to the dump.

Fast food workers don't make enough to buy the hamburgers and fries they're making?

And take a guess what a City of Chicago garbage collector takes home?

Actually it's a Streets and Sanitation worker and that means juicy pension in addition to salary.

because fast food workers are the only ones who make min. wage? and if they wish to live on their own, no, they can't afford to buy food out.

City sanitation worker salaries top out in the mid 40's.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/bizfin...features/4086/

http://www.salaryexpert.com/index.cf...sitionid=78876

Overtime will take them, on average, into the mid 60s. Hardly a rich person's salary. Especially living in a city.

Oh, and a follow-up on the welfare vs work- Lori, I know you read Slate as much as I do, so I imagine you've already seen this, but I thought it was interesting follow-up:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_...wpisrc=flyouts

Add in covered healthcare and 70% of average salary as a pension and we're a far cry from minimum wage.

That's why even Rahmbo is looking to privatize garbage collection. :eek:

So you're saying garbage collectors deserve to live in poverty?

You used fast food workers as the example.

The skill-set needed to punch a picture of a hamburger and fries and then communicate it to the kitchen must be tough. Look at how many times it results in a mistaken order. Surely they should be paid as much as those who provided said skill-set, public school teachers.

No I'm not saying that. Private collectors are paid comparable wages to public workers. It's all in the pension.

And no garbage collectors should not earn a rich-person's salary unless there's a MG (Masters' of Garbage) program at Wharton I'm not familiar with.

So a 60K salary is "rich" to you? Because 44K plus health care adds up to a mid-60s salary (estimate a third more for health care and Social Security costs- much of which the employing company gets to deduct).

Seventy percent pension would mean a collector would be living on about $30-35K a year in retirement. You consider this overly lavish?

no:


'yeah, it seems many have forgotten what henry ford always thought and worked by, pay your employees enough that they can afford to buy the product they're making.' last time i checked, henry ford had owned a car maker

and then i said : 'thing is, people like to look down their noses at people in fast food, or other service industries...'

60K is not rich and I think is fair pay, it's also a far cry from minimum wage and with healthcare added I would definitely consider it middle class.

When the $30-$35K comes from the taxpayer, then yes I consider it lavish. Drawing from the employee's 401K, I consider livable with Medicare and SS added. I also call it self-reliant and not taxpayer subsidized.

Illinois and many other states don't have a problem with payroll it's pensions that have been neglected/pilfered and mismanaged at no fault of the taxpayer yet guess who's on the line?