You may have heard the term “poverty trap” — the notion that the poor are stuck at the bottom. What if someone told you that our welfare system exacerbates this cycle by punishing the poor for working more? Prof. Sean Mulholland argues that this is happening every day. Well-intentioned welfare programs drastically decrease benefits at certain income thresholds—which in effect can make a breadwinner and his/her family worse off when they start earning more. Sound absurd? That’s because it is.
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If you are in poverty, don’t have kids.
In fact, don’t have them anyway.
“If you have kids ….. kill them!” ——— Pirate Jo on a Bad Hair Day
Yes, it is illogical to take away more from what they are being given than the extra they are earn. That is a disincentive to earn more. But that is answering the wrong question, isn’t it?
But if you really want to incentivize them to earn more, how about not give them fucking welfare in the first place? They will be truly motivated to earn in that event. The whole notion of welfare gives disincentive to earn. We should not be discussing how to structure the rules of welfare, but rather how to shut off the spigot entirely.
Fucking economists have their heads up their asses.
Celebrity economists: proof that the Ivy League is a force for evil and mediocrity. Except for Llpoh.
& the USA must also get rid of corporate welfare, subsidies, & the biggest welfare program in history, Quantitative Easing.
& abolish the corporations are people nonsense. Citizens shouldn’t pay income taxes, only corporations, but not the ridiculous rates & tax structures which encourage off-shoring.
Section 8 housing is the big one. That’s dollars an hour gross right there. Elimination of section 8 housing would level the playing field for all renters and make rents cheaper for those with out section 8.
However, without section 8 housing don’t expect Americans to compete with illegal aliens who sleep 4 to a room and 6 to a garage.
This little poindextexter nerd in the video doesn’t live in the real world. So don’t waste your time listening to him for solutions.
The guy in the video seems like he has a good heart and wants to help fix a problem but he is just a sheep like so many others. Besides the whole futility of the welfare system like llpoh points out, he fails to grasp that the so called “poverty trap” is intentional.
We tend to think of our 545 criminal scumbags……..I mean representatives as being idiots and to be fair, many are but most of them are quite aware and knowledgeable of what is going on. The system works the way it does BY DESIGN. It enriches our owners and is working perfectly.
I find it hard to believe that a professor of economics would be so ignorant as to think he could “fix” the welfare system but I’d like to have a few beers with a guy like that and enlighten him.
The learned professor has put the cart before the horse. The system as it is designed does not “punish you for working more”, rather it rewards you for NOT working at all.
Get that?
If the mother/son anecdote he recalled was indeed true, he had a family that was so well compensated for not working that the first time they noticed their true economic condition was when their access to the government teat was cut off. Their previous economic condition was based entirely on the hard work of other people that was stolen from them and given to the mother and her son as a reward for their indolence. Of course the government doesn’t really care about the the people on assistance, it simply needs them to be dependent in order to reinforce the NEED for government involvement.
Last night, after spending the day digging a well, by hand with my oldest son for a neighbor, a job that would seem daunting to most people, but which in fact was physically challenging, allowed us hours together to talk, benefited our neighbor who was too old to do the job himself, and rewarded us with some income- probably as much as some people get from a weeks worth of benefits- we ate a meal prepared by my wife and sourced entirely from our farm. We then went back out to the garden- all of us including the 6 year old- and planted two hundred foot rows of beans, weeded the greens, and in general were productive and enjoyed each others company until it was dark. No one pays us for these efforts, they are simply part of our daily life where we provide for ourselves and the reward of spending that time together, in common purpose of our own free will is priceless.
As I have said in the past our income from the farm- and outside labor like digging the well- are required to pay for things like property taxes, insurance on the farm and equipment, fuel and necessities like routine dental care, footwear, etc. What we can produce ourselves, we do together as a family. What we excel at as individuals, we pursue on our own for mutual benefit. What we lack in terms of modern conveniences we live without, but what we do not do is give up our independence, for any amount of money. Our family may qualify as living in poverty if income is the only factor taken into account, but we live like royalty when it comes to how we choose to live.
I feel sorrow for families like the one the professor used in his piece above, but their options are no limited by an either or scenario of government dependence or low income poverty, but more by poor choices (you notice that there is no father in the story) and a lack of imagination in how one can live their lives. All of us have choices we can make, all of us must live with the consequences of those choices, but none of us must accept the narrative offered as the only way to live our lives.
At what will those on the welfare roles earn more loopy, in manufacturing?
HS Farmer, the problem is today these “mothers” are probably third or fourth generation welfare recipients, they can’t imagine a life other than government assistance.
I’ve talked with many teachers in my little town, sadly kids today believe that welfare is a career choice, after rap star, basketball star, football star, pimp or drug lord.
There is no solution to our failed system but a reset of the failed system.
csun,
It’s not so much as what you will earn in manufacturing as what you will learn in any job.
You can always take any knowledge gained from any job and use that to step up, and up and up. When I interview people I like to see they started at a low paying job and moved along as they gained more skills. That shows initiative and a willingness to learn.
The excuse that welfare pays more than entry level jobs is just that, an excuse, and a sad one at that. America used to be a nation of fighters and doers, now most suck the government tit and cry like little babies with shitty diapers.
@Mark:
Ahhh…Section 8. The bane of every landlord and real estate agent on the planet. You may ask “why?” I will share my experiences with section 8, up close and personal. Then you tell ME why.
I predominantly only sell real estate, and do very few rentals a year. The majority of those rentals are single family homes in rural market areas that typically border the second largest city in my home state, MA.
These rentals are all for the same family, and I have been working for them for years. Their rents range from 1600 for a 4 bedroom, 2 bath ranch with garage to 2500 a month for a 3100 square foot waterfront home on over an acre. Without exception, they say to me “we don’t want section 8 people or college kids (one of the houses is fairly near several colleges). As a real estate agent or a property owner, it is AGAINST THE LAW TO REFUSE TO RENT TO SOMEONE BASED ON SECTION 8 STATUS. College students are SOL, they are not a protected class in MA, neither are smokers. Oh, and I CANNOT ASK ABOUT THEIR IMMIGRATION STATUS.
@Mark:
Sorry, I cut myself off there mid-comment!
Anyway, I cannot even ask a potential applicant if they are on section 8 or if they are in the country legally or not. God forbid they ruin the property or skip out on the rent and my clients want to try and track them down to serve them court papers or recoup money. A property owner also cannot advertise “no section 8”. The only way to refuse someone on personal grounds like section 8 or if they have kids is to actually live in the property and the property be 4 units or less. Or if your over 65 and own the place. Apparently the elderly are given a pass and the rest of us just have to take it. Without a single exception, all of the Section 8 applicants I have encountered barely speak English (or only one family member does), and the rent and expenses of the house exceed their monthly benefit. What does that mean, exactly? For instance, in the second largest city in MA, a 4 bedroom apartment has a Section 8 benefit of $1400. The state/feds will pay a property owner $1400 for that 4 bedroom rental. Ok, so that seems to work on a $1600 a month rent, right? Surely these people can come up with $200 out of their own pocket? Well….when mom is at home with 3 kids and does not work, and dad only makes $250 a week after taxes, then, no. The electric bill in this area for a family that size which is home most of the time will be about $200 a month. Then we have fuel. This particular house has oil heat. So now your talking $450-$500 a month from November to March. Maybe they will get fuel assistance, maybe not. It’s first come, first served, and with oil heat it’s a rebate after the fact unlike with gas heat. And trash. In my area, a single family home comes with more expenses to the renter, and owners are allowed to NOT include trash. So add on another 50-100 a month for trash. Add cable and whatever phone they use and voila! They exceed their monthly nut by quite a bit. That doesn’t include gas in the car, entertainment, clothes, etc. Sure, they all get food stamps. They probably have an obamaphone too. Point is, with a razor-thin margin like that, they will most certainly cut corners, and it’s always trash and lawn care, as well as heat. They will stop trash service and try dumping it around the city in gas station bins, cut the grass once a month (if ever, and my owners provide a mower), and use space heaters in the winter (if you are on any benefits at all, the electric company cannot shut you off no matter how high your bill gets. So don’t buy oil, just plug in 10 electric heaters instead., which is a violation of their lease but trust me, they will do it!)
So, I always, always take their application and run their credit (which 99% of the time is non-existent or in the toilet, that’s the one area you can reject them anyway, but there are a few that actually have decent credit because they have a car loan or small credit card). If they don’t falsify their application (if they are here illegally, you can weed them out without asking by verifying pay and SS number. Illegals use stolen SS numbers from deceased people that will not match when you run them. For instance, I had a 20ish man with a number from CA that was issued in the 60’s to a woman. Or they will be paid strictly in cash and cannot verify income. These things will disqualify them immediately.) Ok, so say their credit isn’t bad, they are here legally, but their income really doesn’t support the house. You gently explain that their debt to income ratio is beyond 51% and the owners feel this is too high for them (as they stare blankly at you, they have no idea what debt-to-income ratio is).
Done, right? WRONG. Next you will get a phone call from their CASE WORKER. This is always a lady who thinks she knows the rental laws and is going to scare your owners into renting to her clients. She will tell you that the rent your owners are charging is too high, and that by law they must lower the rent to allow her clients to be able to afford it. At which point I ask her to please quote the law that says that. Which she cannot. I tell her thanks for the call and hang up.
Done, right? WRONG. At this point, I, as an agent, may very well be a target for a local “tester”. Tester? Who are these people? Well, they are typically “protected” classes who pose as applicants and go around looking at apartments trying to catch agents and owners in rental discrimination. Seriously. I have come in contact with testers many times. Never had a problem. That’s because I qualify/disqualify people based on the same things every time. Income, credit, or falsification of application. That’s it. But there are landlords out there that don’t know what they are doing and can get into serious trouble especially with Section 8.
So who wants to be a real estate king and own a bunch of apartments now?
Realestatepup,
I have a colleague who has been doing rentals here in the greater Boston area for over 20 years and you hit it right on the nose. She typically uses credit history to weed out section 8. She has recited to me a long list of the issues she has had with section 8 dwellers from being unable to evict (almost always with children) to extensive property damage. It has always amazed me that people that are getting something for nothing could be so ungrateful. Also as you said they always seem to have trouble coming up with the meager difference between the subsidy and the actual rent that they signed up for, but she said she always noticed they had on nice shoes and recently done nails. Maybe this is why until recently they had a sign up at the Market Basket in Brockton that you could not buy pre-cooked lobster with an EBT card.
Bob.
@realestatepup, amazingly the thing in your post that gets me most pissed off is the ‘over 65’ bullshit. Those asshole artists and prophets (T4T) sure make sure they can tell others what to do while they do what they want….all fucking day long.
If the US govt did its Constitutionally mandated job, it would barely exist and barely be needed. The bigger it gets, the worse the real economy gets.
What Realestatepup says is what happens when govt gets involved. Massive price distortions and disincentive to do once profitable business endeavors.
Also, the govt had a giant hand in creating th environment where unskilled people could pay the rent. It did this through deindustrialization and inflation.
This video is nice, factual, and pointless. The solution to the welfare problem is economic collapse. Once we crater, we can finally accept the simple rule: You don’t work, You don’t eat. Sorry, for the criminal illegal aliens out there, “usted no trabaja, no come!”
card, it is not the possibility of earnings that is the issue for blue collar workers, it the possibility of a job.. a real frikking job..not the potential to go from hamburger flipper to assistant manger of hamburger flippers .I don’t for one minute think that the manufacturing g era of blue collar workers, stay at home moms and American family values will ever return, I’m only saying that sans a middle class of producers, there is no hope for a nation of burger flippers ambitiously pursuing jobs as paper shuffling cubicle dwellers.People have to eat and be sheltered .A nation that cannot provide the jobs for people to provide for themselves have better be damn prepared to feed, clothe and shelter the masses, or else there’s soon to be a lot more smoke in the air….and it won’t be from summer BBQ’s .
It’s a catch 22 thing. As people try to save money and get ahead,any benefits that were helping them are stripped away and put a drag or stop them from getting out of a bad situation.
I have experienced this and can see why people can give up trying.
It’s always great having people with jobs and money complaining about poor people.
@yahsure,
If poor people would stop breeding like rabbits, after a while there wouldn’t be any more poor people – at least, not nearly as many. Jobs are hard to come by, I get it. But if you are already in poverty, how could you be so stupid, ignorant, and selfish as to have kids and KNOWINGLY bring a person into this world who you can’t support? What are kids, the same thing as an Obamaphone? These morons think only with the ‘entitlement’ gland of the brain, and none of the ‘responsibility.’
If that means you never have kids, so fucking what? TeresaE expressed it very well – we have reached peak people. Nobody needs your kids. There aren’t enough jobs for the people who are already here, and the number of available jobs will just keep going down. Think where the numerator is going, and where the denominator is going. Do you know how fractions and percentages work?
The only reason I still have a middle class standard of living is because I DON’T have kids. I wasn’t born with “jobs and money” sealed in a little envelope, given to me by the Great Pug Buddha. I was broke, once, and never got any of these “benefits” of which you speak. But over the last 20 years I have refrained from breeding and consistently spent less than I earned. Now I am no longer broke.