Posts Tagged ‘work’
It’s Better To Be On Disability Than Work Minimum Wage
The sad truth in the USA, as we explained in great detail here, incentives to ‘work’ are increasingly non-existent. Thanks to a never-ending stream of benefits from the great and powerful Oz, as CNBC’s Rick Santelli notes, Disability payments (of which there are 14 million people covered in the US - none of which count towards the unemployment rate) pay around $13,000 per year (versus $15,000 for minimum wage work). However, Santelli exclaims, the people on disability get healthcare; and this program costs the US $300 billion per year. Is it any wonder that only 1% of those who were on disability in Q1 2011 have left? Santelli comments, “I’m not saying there aren’t people that are on disability that shouldn’t be, but much of it is illnesses like back pain… it’s a judgment call,” adding that, “without incentives, large issues go …totally unfixed.”
From ZeroHedge.com
Always ask The Magic Question: What gets rewarded?
Why welfare, food stamps, and other programs often discourage work
Food stamps, welfare, Medicaid and other tax and transfer systems can sometimes penalize people for earning that extra dollar of income
Economists and many policymakers generally agree that our tax and transfer systems should promote opportunity, work, saving, and education rather than consumption. The problem is these programs often penalize people for earning that extra dollar of income. Rather than promoting work and savings, these implicit taxes punish such otherwise positive behavior.
These penalties occur in TANF (formerly welfare), SNAP (formerly Food Stamps), Medicaid, the new health exchange subsidy, Pell grants, student loans, and unemployment compensation. The tax code also is loaded with disincentives to work, save, and study.
Read more by Gene Steuerle at csmonitor.com
Why a single mom is better off with a $29,000 job and welfare than taking a $69,000 job
The U.S. welfare system sure creates some crazy disincentives to working your way up the ladder. Benefits stacked upon benefits can mean it is financially better, at least in the short term, to stay at a lower-paying jobs rather than taking a higher paying job and losing those benefits. This is called the “welfare cliff.”
Let’s take the example of a single mom with two kids, 1 and 4. She has a $29,000 a year job, putting the kids in daycare during the day while she works.
Read more by James Pethokoukis at American Enterprise Institute
Trashing Achievements
There was a time, within living memory, when the achievements of others were not only admired but were often taken as an inspiration for imitation of the same qualities that had served these achievers well, even if we were not in the same field of endeavor and were not expecting to achieve on the same scale.
The perseverance of Thomas Edison, as he tried scores of materials for the filament of the light bulb he was inventing; the dedication of Abraham Lincoln as he studied law on his own while struggling to make a living – these were things young people were taught to admire, even if they had no intention of becoming inventors or lawyers, much less President of the United States.
Somewhere along the way, all that changed. Today, the very concept of achievement is de-emphasized and sometimes attacked. Following in the footsteps of Barack Obama, . . .
Read more by Thomas Sowell at LewRockwell.com
Anti-Romney Protesters Say They’re PAID To Heckle
Two protesters and an Obama official say “Good Jobs Now” protesters are compensated for their time. A protest leader denies it.
The protesters popping up at Mitt Romney’s rallies throughout Michigan Tuesday look like run-of-the-mill grassroots liberals — they wave signs about “the 99 percent,” they chant about the Republican’s greed, and they describe themselves as a loosely organized coalition of “concerned citizens.”
They’re also getting paid, two of the protesters and an Obama campaign official told BuzzFeed.
At the candidate’s afternoon stop outside a bakery in DeWitt, a group of about 15 protesters stood behind a police barricade, a few of them chanting in support of Obama. Asked why he was protesting, a man dressed in a grim reaper costume pointed a reporter to a pair of “designated representatives” standing in the shade.
“I can’t talk, you gotta get one of those people over there to talk to y’all,” he said. “They’re the ones who can talk to reporters.”
Neither of the representatives agreed to give their names, but two protesters said they were getting paid to stand outside of the rally, though their wage is unclear: one said she was getting $7.25 per hour, while another man said they were being paid $17 per hour.
Read more by McKay Coppins at BuzzFeed.com
WaPo wonders: What will hundreds of thousands of job permits do to the economy?
I asked the same question in an update to Erika’s post on Barack Obama’s unilateral move to accommodate young illegal immigrants by refusing to deport them and issue them temporary work permits instead. With potentially as many as 800,000 new workers flooding into the system, what happens to the millions of Americans who can’t find work now? The Washington Post wonders the same thing, and more:
Read more by Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com
70 Years of American Progress!
1942-2012: 70 Years of American Progress!
- From “We can do it!” to “We can get free sh*t from the government!”
- From “The Great Generation” to “The Grift Generation”
- From Rosie the Riveter to Sandra the Riveted
From The People’s Cube
Why the West has bested the rest
Harvard historian and best-selling author Niall Ferguson’s latest book, “Civilization: The West and the Rest,” presents this compelling historical thesis:
At the beginning in the 15th century, the West developed six powerful new concepts that the Rest lacked: competition, science, rule of law, consumerism, modern medicine, and the work ethic … that allowed the West to leap ahead of the Rest, opening global trade routes, exploiting newly discovered scientific laws, evolving a system of representative government, more than doubling life expectancy, unleashing the Industrial Revolution, and embracing a dynamic work ethic.
Ferguson asks: Has the days of Western predominance reached an end not because of clashes with rival civilizations, but simply because the Rest have now downloaded the six “killer apps” we once monopolized while the West has literally lost faith in itself?
Read more by Ellis Washington at WND.com
I am for doing good to the poor . . .
“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” –Benjamin Franklin
Nanny State of the Union (video remix)
Looks like Obama’s teleprompter loaded a cut-and-paste of previous year’s speeches.
If you’ve seen one Obama State of the Union, you’ve seen them all.
June Jobs Report: A Minute with Rep. Mark Honadel
Last week the state Department of Workforce Development announced that Wisconsin’s private sector added nearly 13,000 jobs in June, which is more than half of what was added nationwide.
This report is an encouraging sign that our state economy is beginning to recover as a result of the pro-growth measures we’ve passed this year. More importantly, the new jobs mean that more families in Wisconsin will be getting a paycheck.
The report further indicates that 39,300 jobs have been created in Wisconsin since January, including 14,100 manufacturing jobs.
The economic progress in Wisconsin is in stark contrast with the rest of the country. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, just 18,000 jobs were added across America in June, and the federal unemployment rate remains high at 9.2 percent. Meanwhile in Wisconsin, the addition of 9,500 new jobs, including 12,900 private sector jobs, accounts for the largest one-month gain since September 2003.
My number one priority this session remains on getting Wisconsinites working again, and these numbers are an indication that our state is on the right track. I am not content to stop here, as I look forward to continuing to work this session to make Wisconsin the best state in the nation to do business.
State Representative Mark Honadel
State Capitol, Room 113 West
P.O. Box 8952, Madison, WI 53708-8952
District Office: 414-764-9921 / Madison Office: 608-266-0610
Toll Free: 888-534-0021
~ Keeping in touch with the People of the 21st Assembly District ~