It's a basic economic formula.
Why work your ass off when you can net more by not.............
Tonight's stunning financial piece de resistance comes from Wyatt Emerich of The Cleveland Current. In what is sure to inspire some serious ire among all those who once believed Ronald Reagan that it was the USSR that was the "Evil Empire", Emmerich analyzes disposable income and economic benefits among several key income classes and comes to the stunning (and verifiable) conclusion that "a one-parent family of three making $14,500 a year (minimum wage) has more disposable income than a family making $60,000 a year." And that excludes benefits from Supplemental Security Income disability checks. America is now a country which punishes those middle-class people who not only try to work hard, but avoid scamming the system. Not surprisingly, it is not only the richest and most audacious thieves that prosper - it is also the penny scammers at the very bottom of the economic ladder that rip off the middle class each and every day, courtesy of the world's most generous entitlement system. Perhaps if Reagan were alive today, he would wish to modify the object of his once legendary remark.Read the whole thing here........
After the Clinton welfare reforms in the 1990's, The Cincinnati Enquirer did a piece detailing the benefits a woman was going to lose as a result of the reforms. What was most insulting was that she hated her "dead end job" cleaning hotel rooms.
I calculated the benefits she received from not working and I calculated that she was making $8.50 an hour just to exist.
It doesn't take a smart liberal to figure out that one can work their ass off and make $9.00 or can do nothing for $8.50. It's the cost/benefit principle at it's best.
2 comments:
One who studies economics will learn that what drives the decisions of individuals is not cost, but opportunity cost. Not just benefit, but marginal benefit. In other words, not the total benefit, only the *difference* in benefit. When offered a choice between two options, $8.50/hr. not to work and $9.00/hr. to work, the rational person will see the second option as a job that pays only 50 cents an hour.
The cost to the larger economy is much greater for the non-working option, because the economy has a marginal effect of negative $9.00/hr. not being contributed to the economy.
There are also intangibles of an idle worker. A feeling of disconnect and loneliness, a weakening of skills, and boredom. In this sense the welfare state does more damage to it's recipients than anyone.
I hate, hate, hate EITC. The locust start as soon as W-2s are out. It used to be the 1st week in February, computer processing has pushed it up into the 3rd/4th week of January. They all want "their" money NOW, they all know the system & how it works. By the 2nd week in February I was vowing that the next person to sit at my desk and complain about "only" getting a tax handout (I *refuse* to call it a refund) of $4,400+ was going to get slapped.
Oops, gotta watch the blood pressure. Hence the reason I no longer work in a tax office...
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