'When work is punished'

"The tragedy of America's welfare state."

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/11/when_work_is_punished.html


This ought to get the juices flowing on both sides today.


Tyler Durden at Zerohedge:


Exactly two years ago, some of the more politically biased progressive media outlets (who are quite adept at creating and taking down their own strawmen arguments, if not quite as adept at using an abacus, let alone a calculator) took offense at our article "In Entitlement America, The Head Of A Household Of Four Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than A Family Making $60,000 A Year." In it we merely explained what has become the painful reality in America: for increasingly more it is now more lucrative - in the form of actual disposable income - to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. This is graphically, and very painfully confirmed, in the below chart from Gary Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (a state best known for its broke capital Harrisburg). As quantitied, and explained by Alexander, "the single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045."

I'm sure there's a liberal response to that, but I can't think of anything they could say that would lessen the impact. Durden has several interesting graphs displayed at the link that buttress this claim.

For decades, there has been talk of establishing a "guaranteed income" for all Americans. It would seem unnecessary now. Many of the arguments against the guaranteed income have already come to pass; that giving people something for nothing has the potential to turn them into leeches and making chumps of anyone who struggles while working for a living.

And the problem will only become worse as middle class entitlements, of which Obamacare is the showpiece, will make working even less advantageous. It looks like about half of us will continue to work no matter how many goodies the government dangles in front of us. That won't last long. People resent being made chumps of almost as much as many resent others mooching off the sweat off their brow. Eventually, more and more of us will simply give in to the inevitable and allow government to take care of us.



Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/11/when_work_is_punished.html#ixzz2DbYTheFz