When Welfare Pays More Than Work

When Welfare Pays More Than Work

1. 
   

   In ten states and the District of Columbia, welfare pays more than the entry-level salary for a teacher in that state. In 38 states and the District of Columbia, welfare is more generous than the average starting salary for a secretary. 

   
   

   And in the three most generous states, welfare pays more than the wages for an entry-level computer programmer. 

   
   

   Only 2.6 percent of full-time workers are poor, compared with 23.9 percent of adults who do not work. 

   Even part-time work makes a significant difference — only 15 percent of part-time workers are poor. 

   And, while many anti-poverty activists decry low-wage jobs, even starting at a minimum-wage job can be a springboard out of poverty in the long run  

   Recently, the Cameron government in Britain has introduced a cap on welfare benefits at £500 a week, or about $40,000 a year.

   Connecticut Median Wage Pays Less Than Welfare

   
   

   Hartford Courant:  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.

   When welfare pays better than work | New York Post

   nypost.com/2013/08/19/when-welfare-pays-better-than-work/‎
   

   
   

   Aug 19, 2013 - Of course, no individual or family gets benefits from all 72 programs, but many do get ... looking at the state-by-state value of welfare for a mother with two children. ... Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, public ...That's more than the average statewide entry-level salary for a teacher.
2. 
   

   Is Welfare 'A Rational Alternative To Work'? | WGBH News

   wgbhnews.org/post/welfare-rational-alternative-work‎
   

   
   

   5 days ago - People on welfare — that's everything from food stamps to Medicaid to heating assistance ... "If someone came to me and said, 'I'll pay you everything you're... And if you do get a job, benefits don't all disappear. ... worth almost $39,000 a year, the average starting salary in the state for a teacher or secretary ...
3. 
   

   The Oklahoman's distorted case for cutting the safety net ...

   okpolicy.org › Blog › Poverty‎
   

   
   

   Sep 5, 2013 - Cato arrived at its number for the annual value of public assistance in Oklahoma ( $26,784) by totaling average benefits for Oklahomans receiving TANF,SNAP, Medicaid, ... total that Cato is presenting as Oklahoma's “welfare benefitpackage. ... The Oklahoman mentions that the salary for a retail cashier in ...

   he Cato report and the Oklahoman op-ed are premised on two big distortions of the truth. The first is to base their argument on the premise that Oklahomans receive support from every major public assistance program at once. Cato arrived at its number for the annual value of public assistance in Oklahoma ($26,784) by totaling average benefits for Oklahomans receiving TANF, SNAP, Medicaid, housing assistance, LIHEAP, WIC, and emergency food assistance. Yet these are separate and distinct safety net programs with different purposes and different eligibility criteria. They are not part of any “package.” The number of Oklahoma families enrolled in all of them ranges from tiny to nonexistent.

   
   

   A majority of Oklahoma Medicaid recipientsare children, and working-age adults without children are ineligible for Medicaid regardless of how little they earn. The Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program provides food and baby formula only to low-income mothers of children younger than 5 who are at severe nutritional risk.

   
   

   the vast majority of Oklahoma’s poorest families work hard, but they do not earn a living wage. Public assistance programs are not subsidizing people who choose not to work; they’re subsidizing companies that don’t pay workers enough to live on. Oklahoma’s largest private employer, Walmart, is a prime offender. Examples from across the nation show that workers at Walmart and other large retail and fast food corporations are forced to rely on Medicaid, food stamps, and other public assistance just to get by.

   
   

   Koch conspiracy theory:

   
   

   Ginny Webster says:

   September 6, 2013 at 2:27 pm

   Privately-owned U.S. businesses–the ones the Republicans keep wanting to give ever more and more tax breaks to, despite the fact that many are recording record peofits, and getting taxpayer-funded subsides–so that many aren’t even even paying ANY taxes! And these are the very same ones that the Republicans keep identifying as the so-called “job creators! Only problem is, is that they are very adept at creating huge numbers of lousy,low-paying, minimum wage jobs, primarily in fast food and retail, which don’t pay enough to support an individual worker, let alone support an entire family! And Yes, in addition to paying virtually NO taxes, getting taxpayer-funded subsidies, and all while making a killing, they also want to pass what should be, all their OTHER costs of doing business–like providing their workers with a living wage that is adequate enough to provide every worker & his or her family, with food, housing, health care, and all of the other little necessities of life on to the taxpayers as well!

   They would love to shift ALL of their costs over to the taxpayers, but hey, the dumb taxpayers won’t mind, and they will DEFEND you trying to turn the entire labor force of the United States into a $5.00/day 3rd world workforce, because they all think that someday THEIR ship will come in, because they’re going to win the lottery,and they genuinely believe that they’re somehow going to end up being millionaires too!

   The CATO Institute–funded by the billionaire Koch brothers–(like all of the other Koch brother-funded “think tanks”–is notorious for diseminating fabricated information that has been created for purposes of deceiving and misleading the public on a whole variety of contentious topics.

   The Koch brothers the teo sole owners of Koch Industries–the 2nd largest corporate conglomerate in the United States, fund a whole spider-web of conservative “think tanks” located allover the country, which employ dozens of so-called “experts”,(who all have official-sounding credentials, who are being well-paid to generate and diseminate completely false information and misleading information which has been created for one purpose, and one purpose only: To protect the financial and profit interests of the billionaire Koch brothers! Among their think tanks’ greatest hits:

   1. “Global Climate change (warming) is a hoax”,which of course, was created specifically to protect their oil, gas and petrochemical business interests, which makes up the bulk of their most profitable business holdings.

   2. The Kochs were also instumental in the successful repeal of the Glass Stegall Act, which had protected the United States from the disastrous effects of another economic disaster of the same magnitude of the Great Depression, when it was was passed into law just after the Great Depression.

   Had Glass Stegall still been in effect in 2008, when the United States economy nearly collapsed as a result of companies engaging in dangerous economic practices that had previously been prohibited by that law, we might never have had to endure the horrendous effects of the Great Recession!

   3. The Koch brothers are also committed to the dismantling of the public education system in the United States, and are attempting to do so through their efforts to establish so-called “charter schools”. (privatized schools in the red states under legislative control of the Republicans.)

   4. Through ALEC (The American Legislative Exchasnge Council), theiy are likewise trying to take control of the state prison system away from the control of state government and turn the state penal system into one that is privately owned, which is one reason why prison population in the United States is the highest per capita in the entire world!
4. 
   

   Welfare Statistics | Statistic Brain

   www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-statistics/‎
   

   
   

   Welfare is the organized public or private social services for the assistance of ...include general Welfare payments, health care through Medicaid, food stamps, ... for pregnant women and young mothers, and federal and state housing benefits. ... Number of U.S. States where Welfare pays more than the average salary of a ...
5. 
   

   Welfare: A Better Deal than Work | Cato Institute

   www.cato.org/publications/commentary/welfare-better-deal-work‎
   

   
   

   by MD Tanner - ‎2013

   Aug 21, 2013 - America's public-assistance system pays many people better than the jobs ... Families (TANF), food stamps (SNAP), Medicaid, housing assistance, WIC, ...recipients receive benefits worth more than the median salary there.
6. 
   

   We found that, in 2013, the value of those benefits varied widely across states, from a low of $16,984 in Mississippi to an astonishing high of $49,175 in Hawaii.

   
   

   ine states — Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maryland — as well as Washington, D.C., annual benefits were worth more than $35,000 a year. The median value of the welfare package across the 50 states is $28,500.

   
   

   just to break even, a person on welfare would often have to take a job that paid considerably more than the value of the forgone welfare benefits. In Hawaii, for example, a person leaving welfare for work would have to earn more than $60,590 a year to be better off. In fact, welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 34 states and the District of Columbia. In Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., welfare pays more than a $20-an-hour job, and in five additional states it yields more than a $15-per-hour job.

   Consider this: In ten states and the District of Columbia, welfare pays more than the entry-level salary for a teacher in that state. In 38 states and the District of Columbia, welfare is more generous than the average starting salary for a secretary. And in the three most generous states, welfare pays more than the wages for an entry-level computer programmer. 

   
   

   
   

   Only two states and D.C. provided more generous welfare benefits ...

   articles.courant.com/.../hc-op-tanner-cato-welfare-drain-20130812_1_w...‎
   

   
   

   Aug 12, 2013 - ... Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, housing assistance, utility assistanceand free ... When it comes to gauging the value of welfare benefits, it is important ...That's more than the average entry-level salary for a teacher or secretary. ... rationally to the incentive systems our public policy-makers have established.