When work is punished: The tragedy of America’s welfare state
Exactly two years ago, some of the more politically biased progressive media outlets (who are quite adept at creating and taking down their own strawmen arguments, if not quite as adept at using an abacus, let alone a calculator) took offense at our article “In Entitlement America, The Head Of A Household Of Four Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than A Family Making $60,000 A Year.” In it we merely explained what has become the painful reality in America: for increasingly more it is now more lucrative – in the form of actual disposable income – to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. This is graphically, and very painfully confirmed, in the below chart from Gary Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (a state best known for its broke capital Harrisburg). As quantitied, and explained by Alexander, “the single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045.”
Blowback
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Totally immoral. This is institutionalized immorality.
tom daschle concerned on November 28, 2012 at 4:05 PM
Either the Constitution goes, or the current welfare state goes. You can’t have both.
Paul-Cincy on November 28, 2012 at 4:07 PM
Not just immoral, but also completely insane, since we all know how it’s going to end.
AZCoyote on November 28, 2012 at 4:11 PM
You can’t beat Santa Claus. No, Mr. Limbaugh, you certainly can’t.
kim roy on November 28, 2012 at 4:12 PM
The constitution has been on it’s death bed since bho was first elected! And now that bho was re-elected not even life support will help it if he isn’t stopped! bho is doing everything he/team can think of to get a vast number of American’s under big bro. power/need.
My beloved Republic is going down hill so fast, I don’t think it will survive?
L
letget on November 28, 2012 at 4:13 PM
+1000
People look at me like I’m a crazy person when I explain why I hated the previous deep blue city I lived in. The entire system of governance is deeply immoral, billions of dollars in new bond issuances for stupidity because it’s basically free now.
John_Locke on November 28, 2012 at 4:15 PM
American politicians at their best, playing with the minds and lives of americans, pitting one ‘class’ against another…
Obama, the Great Divider!
Every day it pisses me off more and more with every newsy item I read…
I detest every type of news… it’s never good.
Mind Games people, they are playing mind games and we are losing.
Scrumpy on November 28, 2012 at 4:17 PM
Sadly, I think the one has already gone. And, we know which one is still around.
GWB on November 28, 2012 at 4:19 PM
When this is the state of our society, then we have already gone over the fiscal cliff. Any talk of a “fix” to avoid the disaster coming on January 1, 2013 is meaningless.
UltimateBob on November 28, 2012 at 4:27 PM
Paying off the mortgage next week, taking savings to do so. If energy prices skyrocket, as Obama wishes, and ethanol replaces food, everything will be much more costly. Having no mortgage will be a big help, especially if our IRA’s are confiscated or taxed into oblivion. Will buy some gold with the money that used to go toward the mortgage. Also ammo and a few more lessons at the range.
Qzsusy on November 28, 2012 at 4:31 PM
Right. We are already Greece and Spain.
darwin on November 28, 2012 at 4:33 PM
Exactly according to Obama’s plans:
- no jobs, more modern day slaves, for votes only
- destroy the middle class – they are so passe and too independent
Only fools believe otherwise.
In the meanwhile he, Louis XV and his Madame de Pompadour live well.
Starve the Looters.
Schadenfreude on November 28, 2012 at 4:37 PM
Not at the moment, but it’s inevitable when you have so many people getting comfortable in their lucrative government-funded work-free lifestyle.
Why would they bother to try and find employment when they can sit back and let sugar daddy provide for them? How can we ever possibly turn the corner and recover from that?
UltimateBob on November 28, 2012 at 4:49 PM
As the analogy goes, why be one of those pulling the wagon when sitting in the wagon getting pulled is so much easier. And more fun now too since you get to sit in wagon and call those pulling it names.
filetandrelease on November 28, 2012 at 4:49 PM
Especially since democrats are doing everything they can to stop job creation anyway.
darwin on November 28, 2012 at 5:03 PM
Best estimate of the shadow economy is that it is at 25% of GDP and growing. Bartering and silver are becoming not only acceptable in a commercial sense but are also becoming a form of vetting (if you offer payment in silver, you’re one of the good guys).
The GDP of the US will shrink as more and more take their labor outside the reach of the feds. The Fed Reserve can print all the Bernanke bucks it wants but they will not affect the silver people. I wouldn’t be surprised to eventually see dual pricing – choice of using dollars or silver coins.
platypus on November 28, 2012 at 5:17 PM
Honest work is for suckers. Even when you can find a job, it’s part-time junk that won’t even pay enough to let you live independently. I shoulda been fascinated with being a burglar instead of a computer programmer when I was little.
Hey, maybe I can take up squatting as a lifestyle. There’s gonna be a whole lot of houses and nobody can afford them anyway.
MelonCollie on November 28, 2012 at 5:57 PM
/QFT in a sarcastic kind of way
Paul-Cincy on November 28, 2012 at 6:04 PM
We can’t. This is Europe and here is no way back.
And yet, some people think obama is just dumb? Really? He achieved the ultimate communist goal in just 4 years – healthcare and 50% under welfare and gov jobs.
Between voter fraud and more than 50% fully covered by the government, that’s it.
Very well done, indeed. We should congratulate him. He sure deserves it. Job very well done according to plan.
Next: sharia and islamization of the US and end of Israel – well underway. That will also work for him since nobody is stopping him, neither the people or Congress.
So sad.
American Dream 246 on November 28, 2012 at 6:09 PM