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?

Yes Henry Ford owned a car maker and his employees made cars. Fast food workers make hamburgers and fries and it's hard for me to believe, using your Henry Ford model, they can't afford the product they make.

You are aware many public employees don't get 401Ks, aren't you? And that many also don't get SS? So their pensions, which were PROMISED TO THEM, are all they get. My uncle, who was a state trooper for over 30 years, is one of those public employees who gets no SS.

Yes, it's horrible that elected officials overestimated market returns and so chronically underfunded pensions, but who was in charge of electing those officials? Right... we taxpayers. And we taxpayers are the ones who benefit from not having garbage-strewn streets, highways that are in reasonable condition, police on patrol and fire fighters. We pay their salaries because they WORK FOR US. The least we can do is not renege on the employment contracts we made with them. God forbid they get to live a middle class life and have some security in their retirement years. God forbid.

Some info on Detroit, which is looking at cutting pensions:

So, out of 21,000 municipal retirees, only 82 are getting over $90,000 a year. And if the average pension is $19,000, that means quite a few are getting less than $19,000 a year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/us...anted=all&_r=0

From "Nickeled and Dimed":

God forbid some young middle class family who has never been on the public dole is unable to afford a tutor or even help out with college for their children because of the politicians who hired family as pension fund managers, who in turn fleeced the money.

Privatizing the sanitation department and other bloated, mismanaged, patronage filled departments will prevent that problem from ever happening again.

A testament to 'stay in school' even if it be a trade school.

BTW A poor woman who goes hungry yet produces children who undoubtedly will go hungry is compounding the poverty in America problem far more than the minimum wage paying store owner living in a shiny house is by far.

ok...
are you willing to see the fast food industry disappear completely? are you a consumer of fast food?

If we don't increase minimum wage, the fast food industry will disappear?

And no I am not a consumer of fast food, or at least try not to be. Of course I consider trying to preserve good health my responsibility and not my neighbor's vis a vis government.

BTW I don't always enjoy exercising either

my point is that industries are here to service people. that we shouldn't demand a service, and then demand that people be paid low wages to support our wants. we can't have it both ways, can we?
i don't buy fast food, but many do. yes, they are typically unskilled. many are also hard-working with mouths to feed. the average age of fast food employees is not 18, they aren't high schoolers. it's closer to 30.
if corps. paid living wages, we wouldn't need the govt to pick up the slack, thus lowering tax demand. poor mcdonals might only make $2 billion in profit instead of $3billion, poor guys.

people want fast food. people have to work in fast food to provide the service. as a requirement, we want them to be poor?
what about the fact that min. wage should be about $10/hour if it kept up with all the wage and living increases?

or is the answer to just keep people stupid and poor? i mean, they deserve it, because we want mcdonalds, right?

will the fast food industry disappear? of course not. should people be paid a decent wage? absolutely.

Because private industry is never, ever, ever mismanaged and private industry never, ever gives jobs to incompetent family members.

This ridiculous meme that private industry is inherently more capable of handling public services is a zombie that just won't die. Except instead of eating brains, it eats the middle class and the poor.

Uh, no. In fact, the grossly overpaid CEO is the bigger problem.

Then why in the world did you ask me if I wanted them to disappear?

Do you tip your fast food server? Or the person at the drive-thru?

You realize individual McDonald's restaurants are owned by franchisees and not the corporation, no?

You also realize many McDonald's employees, especially in urban areas are paid more than minimum wage and sometimes even double?

Or is it someone built the road to the McDonalds so jimmy crack corn and I don't care?

Yea and he/she is overpaid and the CEO because they hit the lottery. Not because of their intelligence, work and talents.

Plus CEO's are exempt from income taxes and contribute nothing to either the treasury or charity.

In fact if there were no overpaid CEO's there would be no poverty. Look at North Korea.

Except private companies are threatened and punished for mismanagement and incompetent family members with bankruptcy and failure. While public services simply print more money and go further into debt. Passing the bill to the next generation. When the next generation doesn't have the means to pay, Detroit happens.

Artificially setting wages as a solution to poverty is equivalent to trying to open a can with a sponge or solving a criminal problem with a midnight basketball league.

because if we want that as an industry, we must make sure it's a viable industry, and offers viable employment.
and no, i don't tip them, i don't go to those places. but i recognize that there's a need, and the employees need to be paid. and should be paid.
if your answer is that everyone should learn a skill and get a good job...then i would ask, who will work at fast food places? those jobs are necessary. are we supposed to just sneer at those poor, dumb sods but buy the product anyway? are we to just tell ourselves that it's their fault they work there?

when i was in the navy, as the chief told us in orientation in boot camp....some jobs in the military are more glamorous than others. but who is more important? for example, the pilot of the fighter plane, or the unsung mechanic who makes sure every bolt is tight? every job in the military is important, whether the yeoman who shuffles papers, or the boiler tech, or the nuke ET. they all are needed. they aren't all 'sexy', but they are all necessary.

now, should a mcdonals employee make 100k a year? of course not. should he or she be paid a living wage? absolutely. who is more important to the hungry person going thru the drive thru? i promise, it isn't the high paid ceo or the shareholder. you want your burger, and you want it now.

and what does it matter if some are franchises instead of corporate?

oh, and i do apologize. mcd's profits were't $3 billion.
it was $5 billion. but yeah, i see your point. they'd be hardpressed to pay more, wouldn't they?


and 'artificially setting wages'? the min. wage has been around for decades, but it has lagged with the rest of growth. it should be at $10/hour or so right now. wages are stagnant all over, not just there.
define 'artificial' what does that mean?

Artificial is the government deciding what a wage should be regardless of the business or what skill set is needed to work a particular job.

If a McDonald's was having a hard time staffing a restaurant would it just close or raise wages? Do McDonald's employers in urban areas and wealthy parts offer more than minimum wage because those owners are more generous or because they'd have a hard time finding employees at minimum wage?

You do realize a fighter pilot could swab a deck and clean a latrine after taking off and landing on a aircraft but a seaman swabbing a deck doesn't have a chance successfully flying the jet. Wonder how your boot camp Chief would have responded if you said, "so I am just as important as you?"

In other words I have a feeling the Chief was lying to ya all.

no, his point was even if someone is a 'lowly' deckhand, they are important.
a pilot can't complete his mission if the plane falls apart because the nuts and bolts weren't tightened. ships can't sail for very long without everyone on the team.
everyone likes to bust on the laundry detail...but guess what, you have to have clean skivvies.
people like to rag on fast food workers-but who else will fix the big macs people like so much? your garbage man-you don't want to go to the dump, do you?
people like to think they're superior, i guess it makes them feel better about themselves.

and the govt doesn't set wages, it just sets the low point. yeah, it would be soooo much better if we left it to the corporations to set those.

And some people think the system is fixed and the reason for their failure. Guess it makes them feel better rather than blaming themselves for getting pregnant as a child or dropping out of high school to hang out or etc. etc. etc.

so, food workers are pregnant drop outs? wow.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/60...u-need-to-know


note:

Few work full-time because the industry cuts work hours at 32 hours so they don't have to give benefits…


http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...-child/278424/


Meanwhile, the vast majority have at least a high school degree, and a surprising 31 percent have at least some college. Presumably, some of those people are students working their way through school, but exactly how many who knows. The broader point is that these jobs aren't primarily a refuge for high school dropouts.