Commentary by James Shott
Most Americans think that helping truly needy people, whether they live here or in some other country, is a worthy objective. Looking at charitable contributions as a benchmark, Americans are the most generous people in the world, giving $316.23 billion to charitable organizations in 2012, about 2 percent of GDP, according to Charity Navigator, and preliminary figures for 2013 indicate a significant increase to $328 billion.
Double those numbers and it still would not be good enough for the federal government, which believes that if private sources don’t relieve every semblance of suffering for every single suffering American, the government must step in and do the job better.
Except that government can’t do it better, never has, and never will.
Government’s failure to achieve better results than normal people doing what normal people do has never been a deterrent to wasting billions of taxpayers dollars in a futile effort to try one more time to do so.
The most notorious failure was Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” which began 50 years ago in Mr. Johnson’s State of the Union message. From the beginning of the war on poverty until 2013, local, state, and federal spending on welfare programs totaled $16 trillion, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Currently, the United States spends nearly $1 trillion every year to fight poverty.
When the War on Poverty began, 33 million Americans were in poverty and the poverty rate was 19 percent. Today, approximately 46.5 million live in poverty and the poverty rate is 15 percent. Even though the poverty rate is lower than 50 years ago, because our population is much larger now than then, more people are poor today than in 1964. We have fought a long and expensive fight, and lost. Yet we still fight on.
President Barack Obama’s cause du jour is income inequality, and it’s significant other, the minimum wage. And now that “reforming” the best healthcare system in the world is well underway, he wants to declare war against income inequality.
In no free or relatively free economic system can there be income equality, for two reasons. First, inequality is a fundamental part of life. Some people sing better than others. Some are better athletes than others. And some people make more money than others, and that’s because some people are better at their job than others and deserve higher pay, and some jobs require more skill and training than others, and pay better.
So, like poverty, another area that will always exist, we will always have income inequality.
Far more important, however, is whether there is the opportunity to move up from the lower income levels, and that is an area that has been fairly stable, according to The New York Times, which reported last month that “the odds of moving up — or down — the income ladder in the United States have not changed appreciably in the last 20 years….”
That means that people in the lowest quintile are not condemned to stay there, and people in the top quintile are not guaranteed to stay there, and there is substantial movement in and out of all quintiles.
It’s a favored piece of envy politics that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But the data tell a different story. From 1967 to 2009, the real mean household income increased for every quintile, which means the poor became richer, not poorer. Americans in poverty could afford more goods and services in 2009 than in 1967, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Other factors, like where people live, have an effect. Harvard University’s Raj Chetty reported “the probability that a child reaches the top quintile of the national income distribution starting from a family in the bottom quintile is 4.4 percent in Charlotte but 12.9 percent in San Jose,” and factors such as better primary schools and greater family stability also aid upward mobility, he wrote.
Larry Kaufmann, senior advisor at Pacific Economics Group, discussed findings of the Pew Charitable Trust, which showed that “Half of children born to parents with bottom-third income levels experience upward relative mobility when the parents remain continuously married; the figure falls to 26 percent when this is not the case,” he wrote.
The Pew study shows that the poverty rate among married couples is only 6 percent, and among married couples who both have full-time jobs the poverty rate is practically zero. The poverty rate among single dads and single moms, however, is much higher: 25 percent for single dads and 31percent for single moms.
Investor’s Business Daily Senior Writer John Merline notes that income inequality has increased faster since Mr. Obama took office than under any of the three previous presidents, and that inequality is now greater than at any time since the Census Bureau started recording it back in 1947.
The message from this is that to assist folks in moving up the income ladder, Mr. Obama should replace his administration’s policies that impede economic recovery, and seriously encourage the restoration of family values among Americans. That would accomplish far more than making people think they are victims, and fomenting division among Americans.
Cross-posted from Observations
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Welfare. Tampilkan semua postingan
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How many of America’s “poor” are like this lady and her husband?
The way that many welfare recipients think was revealed in a call to a radio talk show on KLBJ-AM in Austin, Texas. Lucy, a 32 year-old married mother of three, whose parents also had been on welfare, said this about her situation:
“I just wanted to say while workers out there and people like you that are preaching morality at people like me that are living on welfare, can you really blame us? I mean, I get to sit home, I get to go visit my friends all day, I even get to smoke weed, and people that I know that are illegal immigrants, that don’t contribute to society, we still going to get paid. Our check’s going to come in the mail every month and it’s going to be on time. And we get subsidized housing, we even get presents delivered for our kids at Christmas. Why should I work?”
“So you know what? You all get the benefit of saying, ‘Oh, look at me. I’m a better person,’ because you all are going to work. We’re the ones getting paid. So can you really blame us?”
Asked if her husband works, she said he does sometimes, but “he doesn’t really see the need for it.” Has she ever worked? “A couple of times.” Does she ever feel guilty about gaming the system and taking money other people have earned? “But you know, if someone offers you a million dollars, would you walk away from it? It’s easy to preach morality, and that’s the only reason why I called. It’s easy to say, ‘Well, yeah, you know, you’re making your living off of other people’s backs.’ But, you know, if somebody gave you a million dollars, and said that, here, you don’t got to work for it, no strings attached. Here, just take it, you can do whatever you want to do with it. You would take it, too.”
The host asked if she was calling in on an “Obamaphone” (a cell phone provided by the federal government) and she answered that she was. Then, when asked how much she received each month, she said she only pays $50 a month for rent that should be $600, so that’s $550, $425 in food stamps, $150 for her electric bill, and $100 on her water bill from the City of Austin. That comes to $1,225 a month, $14,700 a year, just less than the current federal minimum wage. Plus the cell phone.
She also said that when you are in government programs, “they are always coming to you and offering more programs,” and will even pay you to go to find out about where you can get more money. “They encourage you to stay on the programs.”
Asked if her money was cut off, would she get up every day and go to work, she said, “yes, I’d have to.”
This situation makes perfect sense to people like Lucy and her husband, who never learned the lesson that mature, responsible human beings make their own way in life, and who now live a relatively comfortable life without having to do anything to help themselves. They are a product of the failed War on Poverty for which we can thank President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), the namesake of the radio station Lucy called. They are among a large and growing number of Americans being taught that the government will take care of them, and they don’t have to do well in school, or learn a trade, or look for a job, or do much more than draw breath.
Last year the Census Bureau reported that 46 million Americans were in “poverty.” But how many of those are really poor and need some help, and how many are like Lucy and her hubby; playing a system that allows those eager for a free ride to get one?
Census Bureau data reveals the following about people classified as “poor”: eighty percent of poor households enjoy air conditioning; nearly three-fourths own a car or truck, and 31 percent own two or more cars or trucks, nearly two-thirds subscribe to cable or satellite television, 50 percent own a personal computer, and one in seven owns two or more computers; 43 percent subscribe to Internet access; one-third own a wide-screen plasma or LCD television; one-fourth own a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo; more than half of poor families with children own a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
Poverty ain’t what it used to be.
It isn’t government’s job to help individuals who are down on their luck, and as the War on Poverty has demonstrated, it does a lousy job of it. And it surely isn’t government’s job to give taxpayer’s money to people who don’t really need it, or to actively recruit people who don’t need welfare onto welfare roles. That is the epitome of government disservice, and elected official’s self-service.
George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote has been used a lot recently, but it has never been truer than today: “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
Progressivism transforms “welfare to work” to “welfare to not work”
The widely reported number of Americans in poverty is 46.2 million, about 15 percent of the population. July’s Household Survey revealed that 11.5 million were unemployed; 2.4 million will work but aren’t actively looking; and 8.2 million wanted full-time work but could only a find part-time job. And the Civilian Labor Force Participation rate was a very low 63.4 percent.
Yet CBS News reported that a survey of 2,000 employers showed one-third of them said lots of jobs go unfilled for three months or more. Many of the roughly three million unfilled jobs are in skilled trades and pay good wages, making one wonder about the current “everybody needs a college education” mania that now grips the country.
Another reason that good jobs go unfilled is that the federal government’s assistance programs make it easy to not work, and frequently pay more than some jobs.
The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner, writing in the Los Angeles Times (Online) notes that, “Contrary to stereotypes, there is no evidence that people on welfare are lazy. Indeed, surveys of welfare recipients consistently show their desire for a job.” Yet the “U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says less than 42 percent of adult welfare recipients participate in work activities nationwide,” he continued. “Why the contradiction?”
“Perhaps it’s because, while poor people are not lazy, they are not stupid either,” he writes. “If you pay people more not to work than they can earn at a job, many won’t work.”
In looking at federal assistance programs, Mr. Tanner noted that most reports on welfare focus on only a single program, the cash benefit program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. But he explained that “focusing on this single program leaves the impression that welfare benefits are quite low, providing a bare, subsistence-level income.” However, most get assistance from more than one of the federal government’s 126 separate programs for low-income people, 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits to individuals.
In order to analyze how the federal assistance programs affect recipients, the Cato Institute created a hypothetical family consisting of a mother with two children, ages 1 and 4, and then calculated the combined total of seven of the most common benefits that the family could receive in all 50 states.
In Washington, D.C., and Hawaii, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maryland, New Hampshire and California, that group of seven programs provide benefits worth more than $35,000 a year. The value of the package in a medium-level welfare state is $28,500.
Since welfare benefits are not taxed, to put the benefits issue in perspective the Cato study calculated how much pretax income the family would need to earn in order to provide the same amount as a 40-hour-per-week job. This calculation took federal and state income taxes, earned income tax credits and the child tax credit into account.
The study found that welfare pays more than an $8-an-hour job in 33 states and the District of Columbia, and that in 12 states and the District of Columbia welfare pays more than a $15-an-hour job. And, in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, D.C., welfare pays more than a $20-an-hour job.
Comparing the results with specific jobs, the Cato study found that in California and 38 other states, it pays more than the starting wage for a secretary and in the three most generous states, welfare benefits exceed the entry-level salary for a computer programmer.
While not every welfare recipient gets these seven benefits, many do, and some receive even more than the package used by the Cato study. “Still,” Mr. Tanner concludes, “what is undeniable is that for many recipients in the most generous states — particularly those classified as long-term recipients — welfare pays substantially more than an entry-level job.”
Welfare is supposed to be a temporary thing for most recipients, not a career. Yet in many cases able-bodied men and women do not look for work because they can do better on welfare.
Such a system discourages people from taking responsibility for themselves and their families. It creates a large faction of government dependents; a status that deprives people of self-respect and the pride of accomplishment that results when one succeeds in life because of their own efforts.
Even a low wage job is better than welfare, as it often is only a first step to better jobs. U.S. Census figures show that only 2.6 percent of full-time workers are poor, while 23.9 percent of adults who do not work are poor.
This country became what it once was not by millions depending upon government to feed and clothe them, but by Americans making themselves successful through determination and hard work. That is the goal our welfare system must have.
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