Study: Welfare pays more than minimum wage in most states

I think this thread is somewhat related to another thread on ATS by neo96 HERE relating to how NY welfare recipients receive better benefits than teachers.

Another study has shown that welfare pays better than minimum wage in 35 states.

Welfare pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, creating little incentive for Americans to take entry-level work and likely increasing their long-term dependency on government help, according to a new study by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute. Read more: www.foxnews.com...

With welfare paying so well where is the incentive for anyone to work 40 hours a week for LESS money? If you have the opportunity to sit home with your family watching TV and collecting a check what is the incentive for you to take a cashier's job or even the sales counter at your local JCPenny?

This is madness when jobs can't pay more than the government will pay you to sit on your butt. How can we convince people to participate positively in society if we continue to create disincentives in this way?

I don't suggest taking or cutting the welfare benefits of people that truly need it, but there must be a way to create positive incentives for taking a job. What do we do to fix this?

Study: Welfare pays more than minimum wage in most states

Originally posted by Metallicus
With welfare paying so well where is the incentive for anyone to work 40 hours a week for LESS money?

The usual incentive is that it looks good on your resume when you apply for a *better* job later on.

Applicant 1: Did nothing for the last few years except watch TV.
Applicant 2: Worked at Walmart for 3 years.

Okay, there is a different problem here. The real problem is not that welfare pays more than minimum wage in most states, or that it provides better benefits for teachers. Welfare or whatever is made as a safety net in order to ensure that people can make the minimum requirements.

Attacking welfare is only going to rip apart that safety net for those people, and then they will probably retaliate on whatever your income source is.

It is all stupid - you should be focusing on how come a working American or a teacher can't earn more than someone on Welfare. If you tear down the welfare safety net in an economy where -

Most people under 30 can barely afford to buy food and pay rent and get gas even though they are college educated, you are just asking for your own problems, man.

This agenda pretty much blatantly states that the lifestyle of someone on welfare is the lifestyle we should all aim for as the new American Dream. A better agenda would be one that asks how come teachers and working Americans can't elevate themselves past the safety net status.

Over here in the UK they throw a house in as well!....I work 6 days a week and there's people who don't work on more than me....Broken Britain . And you try and get any welfare when you need it. They tell you to piss right off..

If that isn't a sign something is broken, then I don't know what is. Its almost like an incentive not to work.

Cant think of much else to say about that..Seems pretty clear cut to me.

Originally posted by Metallicus
I think this thread is somewhat related to another thread on ATS by neo96 HERE relating to how NY welfare recipients receive better benefits than teachers.

Another study has shown that welfare pays better than minimum wage in 35 states.

It is the SAME study by the Koch fueled CATO Institute.

May I remind you of the Conclusion of the TWICE sourced study.

It is, of course, possible to over-generalize from the above statistics. Not every welfare recipient fits the profile used in this study, and many who do fit it do not receive every benefit listed. Many welfare recipients, even those receiving the highest level of benefits, are doing everything they can to find employment and leave the welfare system.

Typical FOX news crap....blame the poor that are barely making it as it is instead of the rich corporations that won't cut into their profits to pay people a livable wage.

MSN Money

Scoff at striking fast-food workers' demands for $15 an hour all you'd like, but one chain is already paying that relatively high minimum wage.

Is it a boutique burger joint in Michigan or Oregon that serves up $5 sandwiches? Nope. It's a tiny little outfit that calls itself McDonald's (MCD), and it still turns a tidy profit in high-wage countries around the globe despite paying workers almost double what it pays American staffers.

The Atlantic reports that not only does McDonald's pay its Australian workers the equivalent of $14.50 an hour -- or double the U.S. minimum wage -- but Australia's Fair Work Commission just hammered out a deal between the company and its employees that guarantees workers up to a 15% raise by 2017. That's in a country where most McDonald's workers are already making more than the minimum to begin with.

FYI Mcdonald's made 5.5 billion in profits last year....

So who is screwing who here?

That's a comment on minimum wage's sad state
more than it is welfare's problem.

Oh and.. Get em Thorneblood!
I'm so glad to have you in the trenches.

One leads into the other man....Let's not forget, Mcdonalds like many fast food chains started cutting employee hours to avoid paying for Health Care costs...

Here, I'll try to make my argument a bit better - what should the safety net be? A bottle of water and a biscuit every day?

Pretty soon, teachers and working Americans wouldn't be able to afford their bottle of water and a biscuit, and then the safety net would be lowered to, I'm not sure, looting, probably.

reply to post by Thorneblood

I don't suggest taking or cutting the welfare benefits of people that truly need it

You will note that I never suggested that welfare benefits be cut for those in need. Clearly we need to have better jobs. The question is how do we create desirable jobs in the current economy? The Government can print money and give it away at their discretion. Businesses that must compete with that welfare check don't have unlimited resources.

On top of competing against a limitless Federal budget, small businesses have so much red tape and mandated expenses it is nearly impossible to compete with a welfare check.

We need a better government than we have been stuck with during the last two administrations. One that is cognizant of the problems facing businesses.

It may be okay for McDonald's to pay folks double the going rate because they are a huge corporation with the ability to lobby the lawmakers. What do you do if you are Mom and Pops burgers? They simply don't have the economies of scale to compete with Big Government and Big Business.

I still don't know how to solve the problem, but right now the playing field is unfair.

reply to post by darkbake


LOL since your brought up teachers, and this is just funny...
Teachers looking for sugar daddies online

Believe it when The Daily Caller tells you: If you find any fault with public school teachers, you will definitely hear about how very hard they work, and how they care so much about making the world a better place.

The Daily Caller now has evidence that the many spirited defenders of the old profession of teaching are right in many exciting, stimulating ways.

SeekingArrangement.com, which bills itself as “the #1 online dating website for sugar babies and generous men,” is now boasting that some 40,000 public school teachers of a certain moral caliber have joined the website in an attempt to sell sexual services seek wealthy, older men for “mutually beneficial relationships

Read more: dailycaller.com...

Teach me a lesson....

You can shoot the source.

You can misrepresent the op's opinion

But you can't change the fact this nation is 17 trillion in debt.

You can't change the fact that 47% of this country is working part time..

And :

The study, an updated version of the one released in 1995, is a comprehensive overview of welfare benefits in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The 1995 study found that benefits from various government welfare programs easily exceeded the poverty level and "their dollar value was greater than the amount of take-home income a worker would receive from an entry-level job."

Yahoo news is hardly 'biased'

Originally posted by neo96
You can shoot the source.
You can misrepresent the op's opinion
But you can't change the fact this nation is 17 trillion in debt.
You can't change the fact that 47% of this country is working part time..
And :

The study, an updated version of the one released in 1995, is a comprehensive overview of welfare benefits in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The 1995 study found that benefits from various government welfare programs easily exceeded the poverty level and "their dollar value was greater than the amount of take-home income a worker would receive from an entry-level job."

Yahoo news is hardly 'biased'

Glad to hear you agree that employers should pay higher wages.

reply to post by Metallicus


Interestingly enough i work for a Mom and Pop store so i know well enough how little profit there is in that. And while i would love to be paid more there is a certain sense of pride in making much better food.

That being said, the best possible incentive i can think of to get people off welfare and back to work is to start by treating them like people and acknowledge just how much money these Big Businesses are actually making off American's while at the same time starving the very people who work for them.

It is a double standard that needs to be addressed, and one that will never be taken seriously as long as we are pretending that being on welfare is a luxury that people enjoy instead of something people do merely to survive in a country that has all but forsaken the common man.

reply to post by BritofTexas


Nope free market dictates pay as the massive regulation state and this living wage bullsnip facilitates the so called need for 'welfare'.

Point of fact those who push welfare are the very same people who created that 'need'.

Point of fact those who claim to want to 'help' people are those who have done the most damage to them.

But who cares right ?

Vilify business ! ! ! ! !

Since the best welfare program that ever existed is a JOB.

reply to post by neo96


This kind of goes along with what Neo is saying.

My bottle of water and a biscuit argument sounded kind of sarcastic, sorry about that, but it wasn't meant to be. There was another thread on ATS recently about globalism and how welfare is the only solution.

There are a lot of statistics out there besides Neo's 47% part-time statistic, and I think if we added them all up, we would get a clearer picture of the situation we are facing here. As for teachers looking for sugar daddies, in my circle of college graduate friends, the teachers are doing the best out of anyone.

I am under the impression that a lot of people don't realize how close they are to hitting the safety net, and especially for people under 30. If it were not for family support, I am pretty certain that every single person I know would need that safety net.

If there was no safety net, you know, the government would just outsource all of the jobs and let people become homeless, the safety net kind of forces the government to at least be somewhat accountable because they have to pay out money based on their mistakes.

By removing that safety net, you are kind of removing your own safety net, see, it kind of holds up everyone, by taking it down, the whole American population would just poor into the ocean, or water, or slums made of scrap metal, whatever is below the safety net, you know?

reply to post by neo96


Forgive me if am wrong here, but are you saying we should vilify the poor?

This is just another topic that is meant to divide people along ideological lines, like race and crap like that.

But what we fail to realize is that there are people suffering out there that need help. There are people out there that want to work, but can't find a job.

There are people out there that work a full-time job as well as a part time and still need help to survive because we refuse to pay a living wage anymore.

There are people out there that work as much as they can, but their age or physical health limits just how much they can work.

You guys can argue all you want about this and about that...but we are not doing anything to address the REAL problems people face these days.

continue on.............

Originally posted by neo96
reply to post by BritofTexas

 

Nope free market dictates pay as the massive regulation state and this living wage bullsnip facilitates the so called need for 'welfare'.

In this "free market" utopia of yours, should business be able to hire whoever from wherever they choose?

Should they be able to hire illegal immigrants for $1 an hour?

Or do you really believe in a regulated market......Just with your own regulations.