Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Why WORK?



Someone sent this via email...maybe it was one of you.  If so, thanks.  And feel free to take credit here.
Can we talk about this?   Are the numbers close to real and what do you guys think about it?:

The Cato Institute released a study showing that welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job in 33 states and the District of Columbia . Even worse, welfare pays more than $15 per hour in 13 states.
According to the study, welfare benefits have increased faster than minimum wage. It’s now more profitable to sit at home than it is to earn an honest day’s pay.
Hawaii is the biggest offender, where welfare recipients earn $29.13 per hour, or a $60,590 yearly salary, all for doing nothing.
Here is the list of the states where the pre-tax equivalent “salary” that welfare recipients receive is higher than having a job:

1.    Hawaii : $60,590
2.    District of Columbia : $50,820
3.    Massachusetts : $50,540
4.    Connecticut : $44,370
5.    New York : $43,700
6.    New Jersey : $43,450
7.    Rhode Island : $43,330
8.    Vermont : $42,350
9.    New Hampshire : $39,750
10.    Maryland : $38,160
11.    California : $37,160
12.    Oregon : $34,300
13.    Wyoming : $32,620
14.    Nevada : $29,820
15.    Minnesota : $29,350
16.    Delaware : $29,220
17.    Washington : $28,840
18.    North Dakota : $28,830
19.    Pennsylvania : $28,670
20.    New Mexico : $27,900
21.    Montana : $26,930
22.    South Dakota : $26,610
23.    Kansas : $26,490
24.    Michigan : $26,430
25.    Alaska : $26,400
26.    Ohio : $26,200
27.    North Carolina : $25,760
28.    West Virginia : $24,900
29.    Alabama : $23,310
30.    Indiana : $22,900
31.    Missouri : $22,800
32.    Oklahoma : $22,480
33.   Louisiana : $22,250
34.   South Carolina : $21,910
Now do you think we should reform welfare?

Now, we all know all these amounts aren't good enough to live on, really, but FOR FREE??   Not bad, eh?  Once this has happened, can we roll them back?
z

39 comments:

Always On Watch said...

Good grief!

Maybe Mr. AOW and I should move to Hawaii. No big heating bills there, either!

DaBlade said...

Tipping point surpassed? Many think so, when the party on the left is flat out communist and the one on the 'right' is only a soft socialist. What an entitlement disgrace. If you elect me, I will, by executive fiat, dissolve these entitlements and give them over to the churches.

Thersites said...

Fifty G's ain't enough to live on?

I'll never retire...

JonBerg said...

Z,

I have referenced this site to many of my addressees today.

Ducky's here said...

What you have posted is the maximum amount not the amount received.

Makes a difference, no?

If someone is laid off a 110,000 job and receives 50,000+ in benefits, I'm going to be the renegade here and say they want to return to work.

Mustang said...

I'd like to encourage everyone in America to stop working and move to Hawaii, or any of the other top bastions of socialism. I't s great deal, and the citizens of those states are chumps. For anyone looking for entitlements, it just doesn't get better than this!

Anonymous said...

What are the percentage of people that are collecting checks and not looking for work ?
Any one know?

One Man Speaking said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Information from the Hawaii Department of Labor:

The Hawaii State Department of Labor & Industrial Relations today announced that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for December was 4.5 percent, up slightly from 4.4 percent in November. Statewide, employment increased by 3,400 to 625,800 and the total seasonally adjusted labor force grew by 4,200 to 655,550 in December. Unemployed declined by 3,850 to 29,750 over the year. Nationally, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.7 percent in December, down from 7.0 percent in November.

So statewide, $60K annually times 625,800?

That's a lot of moola for sitting home doing nothing.

Sam Huntington said...

@ Z

Ed Degorio and Anonymous/Anonymous (above) are both the same person.

Which, given those two comments, is weird.

Jim at Asylum Watch said...

America has achieved a new first. For the first time, working age Americans (18 -60)make up the majority of food stamp recipients. The fastest grow demographich for those on food stamps are young adults with at least some college.

http://news.yahoo.com/face-food-stamps-working-age-americans-155417479.html?.tsrc=attmp

Impertinent said...

Maybe this is what Pelousy meant when she said these welfare recipients were good for the economy?

Z said...

Ducky, it's so much more complicated than that...so much more nuanced. To ignore the point of this post with your point doesn't help.

Sam, I understand you've dug up a lot showing who's really who and I hope that helps the silliness of this new batch of weird commenters who, tho leftist, comment as RABID"Conservatives" here and at other blogs which has so suddenly appeared.
Wait till just before the midterm elections! HUGE influx of new commenters...happens every time.

Please keep on it.

Impertinent said...

Latest quote from CBS's Pelley about the CBO's job losses due to ACA...

"Those aren't necessarily jobs being lost. They're also workers choosing to work less."

Guess that explains those figures? Looks like many more going on the dole to me.

Ed Bonderenka said...

Many people work to get health care.
Now the CBO is saying that many of those won't under Obamacare.
Less workers, less taxes, more drain.

Ed Bonderenka said...

Sorry, Imp. Had the browser open too long, didn't see your comment along the same lines.

Impertinent said...

@Ed:

No problem..the more voices the better.

JonBerg said...

Ed,

"Less workers, less taxes, more drain."


Yes! How could it be any other way? It's kind of like: something for [less] than nothing. All you need is a pulse. What, in the World, will it take to get this monstrosity repealed?

JonBerg said...

Imp....

"No problem..the more voices the better."


DITTO!

Impertinent said...

@Z:

I'm pretty certain I sent ya this.

Divine Theatre said...

Want to know a sure way to create more fatherless children? Pay single mothers for being single mothers, with a guaranteed government income and you will create a legion of them, all of them voting Democrat.

Let us not forget that crime demographics mirror welfare demographics.

The cost is higher than we even realize.

Andie

Kid said...

We can't afford Social Security anymore but have never suggested that we can't afford welfare.
Most of the people on Social Security paid into it, no one on welfare paid into it.

Kinda makes ya think eh.

Kid said...

To ducks' absurdly misleading comment.

The vast majority of people laid off are the "marginally employable". They're only working when large numbers of people are needed and corporations cast out 'the net' to see if they can pick up any good fish. These people are driftwood and are the first to go when the first signs of economic challenges present themselves.

They are all Quite happy to sit at home, smoke weed and breed with you paying the bills. They won't even look for a job until they're put on 2 weeks notice that their employment benefits are being cut off.

There are lots of jobs out there and the person who was making 110k isn't sitting at home. It's not in their genes.

Ducky's here said...

Ducky, it's so much more complicated than that...so much more nuanced. To ignore the point of this post with your point doesn't help.

-----
Yes, and posting stats from the Cato Institute without the underlying methodology is less than nothing.

What did they do, take the highest allowable benefit in all categories, add them and assume that's the standard benefit?

Point is, you don't know, I don't know. Nothing is known without the underlying methodology.

Kid said...

"posting stats from the Cato Institute without the underlying methodology"

Duck, what do you think about democrats, liberals and media (but I repeat myself) people who when presented with why everyone of their ideas and programs fail simply reply either "Unintended consequences" or "We didn't spend enough money"

Notice also that they're only capable of coming up with a total of 2 excuses to cover the entire gambit of their epic failures at everything they stick themselves into.

Ducky's here said...

Captain Queeg: Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic... that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I'd have produced that key if they hadn't of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers...

Z said...

Ducky, nothing QUEEQ about this.

If you want to link where you have proof nobody's ever rec'd any amounts like those, PLEASE DO. Frankly, it'd be a great relief.

Impertinent said...

@Kid:

The real word on Libs...

"KinderGarden of Eden: How the Modern Liberal Thinks.” by Evan Sayet



Impertinent said...

@Kid:

A taste:

"The modern liberal, there’s something about his ideology that leads him to invariably and inevitably side with evil over good, wrong over right, the lesser over the better, the ugly over the beautiful, the profane over the profound, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success.”

If no religion, no culture, no person, if no behavior, if no form of governance – if nothing is better than anything else, then success is unjust.

Why should a person, a nation, a government, religion succeed, if it’s not better than any other? So that liberalism says “everything is equally good, man, coexist – doesn’t make everything meet in the middle. It makes the better, bad."

Impertinent said...

Kid:

More:

QUOTE
What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice.

Those who occupy this world are ''workers,'' ''minorities,'' ''the little guy,'' ''women,'' and the ''unemployed.'' They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized.

They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character.


None of the victims' plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the ''root causes'' of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism.


In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: ''Big Business,'' ''Big Corporations,'' ''greedy capitalists, ''U.S. Imperialists,'' ''the oppressors,'' ''the rich,'' ''the wealthy,'' ''the powerful'' and ''the selfish.''
UNQUOTE

Bob said...

Ducky: Before you criticize someone's statistics, you need to take a look at them, their source, and the methodology. Your criticism is without a basis in facts.

How do you know that the numbers quoted are not the mean or median? They may be the max, but why don't you look at the source and the data and inform us all.

By the way, if somebody were making 110K,and were laid off, they would be spending night and day working on getting another job. I know. Take a look at all the job networking places at you local churches or civic centers.

On the other hand, if I thought I could get $60K for doing nothing in Hawaii, I might do it. I know it is expensive to live there, but it might be fun to try.

JonBerg said...

IMP,

QUOTE
What the liberal ........

I've never seen, heard, it stated better. Good on you man!

Craig said...

I haven't looked at Cato's methodology, but this is from someone who did.

For one, Tanner and Hughes make the assumption that these families receive simultaneous assistance from all of the following programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, Housing Assistance Payments, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC), and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). It is this simultaneous assistance from multiple sources that lets the entire “welfare benefits package” identified by Cato add up to serious money. But it’s absurd to assume that someone would receive every one of these benefits, simultaneously.

Divine Theatre said...

Craig,

The point is that they CAN. Most welfare recipients know how to work the system, so it's likely they are getting even MORE than that.

Andie

Bob said...

Craig: Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions. Careful, guy. We all need to be careful there.

Kid said...

IMP, libs

Evan Sayet is very correct.

I condense it. I just say they're sociopaths and they hate that most people aren't because it forces them to have to pretend they aren't to navigate through life in a mostly non-sociopath world.

Secondly, they live in a total fantasy world. This is why they hate facts and the people that present them or anything else that threatens their fantasy environemnt.

They love obama becuase he is 100% fantasy.

It's why, when I ask libs/duck to present an intelligent counter-point they just come back with idiot speak. Like "ask a coherent question" or geedle gaddle,fiddle faddle".

They're Incapable.

Facts are like the bubonic plague to libs.

Kid said...

IMP, as the man uses Sarah in his presentation, there is a glaring example there. That Sarah gave birth to Trig knowing he would be a burden just drives them up the friggin wall. Remember they're tasked with acting like normal people, so if they have an abortion because they have a child inside them that will be a burden, they can no longer appear normal in their mind. Drives em nuts.

Kid said...

IMP. ..more.. Yea, they're greedy and they're lazy, ie. Loser. There is one talent losers are the Pinnacle at - excuses.

They've invented all these victim status boxes they can slither into and try to get people to give them whatever out of sympathy.

I have experience with losers. The more you Give them the worse you make them. I won't give em a dime.

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