Welfare Pays More than Minimum Wage, Discourages Workers

[Phurfur 70]

Welfare benefits and the loss of leisure time still act as disincentives to earning a salary despite improvements in the welfare-work tradeoff since federal reforms in 1996, according to a report published Monday.

The report by the Cato Institute found that the equivalent wage value of welfare has increased in 33 states since 1995, when the think tank first released a report on the issue. Benefits in the District of Columbia expanded by $6,850 to a total package equivalent to $50,820 in wages, the second largest increase behind Vermont.

Welfare “pays” more than $15 per hour in 13 states

However, the report also notes that welfare recipients in 39 states can accept a job paying slightly less than welfare without losing income. That is a result of state and federal tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, which are designed to encourage working and childbearing.

Still, those tax incentives for work are often outweighed by the remaining tax burden and the loss of leisure, said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and coauthor of the report, in an interview.

“The benefit package is so large and the tax burden so high that it doesn’t make that much of a difference,” Tanner told the Free Beacon.

“A lot of people would choose not to work because of leisure. There’s a lot of sacrifice involved in going to work.”

 

http://freebeacon.com/report-welfare-pays-more-than-minimum-wage-discourages-workers/

 

Cloward-Piven

[Reality 3,121]

You're welcome.

 

 

Yours Truly,

The working stiffs..

 

[Voltaire 5,441]

An inconvenient truth.

[TD Ryan2 316]

Prison guarantees a roof over your head, 3 meals a day, a gym membership, and a college education.

[drobeski 3,061]

This thread is racist

[Phurfur 70]

Give a man a welfare check, a free cell phone, cash for his clunker,
food stamps, section 8 housing, free contraceptives, Medicaid,
ninety-nine weeks of unemployment, free meds, and he will vote for
you the rest of his life --- even after he's dead.