Here so soon: Labor
Day, originally the celebration of the Labor Movement, that has
grown to be celebrated by all of us who work for a living and, I
must add, though I’m not there yet, all who worked for a living and
are retired.
As the children head
back to school, to learn skills that will enable them to work for a
living, they and many of us working people try to take a long
weekend off to enjoy the last phase of summer. Of course, other
working people have to work over the holiday weekend. Note my
frequent use of the four connected letters w-o-r-k.
So, how timely that the
Cato Institute has just released a study by Michael Tanner and
Charles Hughes titled “The
Work and Welfare Trade-off: 2013”, which begins:
“The value of
the full package of welfare benefits for a typical recipient
in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia
exceeds the poverty level. Because welfare benefits are
tax-free, their dollar value is often greater than the
amount of take-home income a worker would have left after
paying taxes on an equivalent pretax income. ... In 40
states, welfare pays more than an $8-an-hour job. In 17
states, the welfare package is more generous than a
$10-an-hour job.”
The Cato Study is a
narrow one; it doesn’t get into the able-bodied men and illegal
immigrants who are getting taxpayer-funded benefits. It defines the
typical welfare family as a mother over age 21 with two children
ages 1 and 4, no known father, none disabled, all American citizens.
The average Massachusetts welfare family “makes” $42,515 a year from
the government, which is the equivalent of $50,540 of taxable income
earned by working here.
It’s not quite that
tidy; not all welfare recipients get all the possible benefits. And
those working people who are comparing should add the value of their
health insurance to their total, as Medicaid is included on the
welfare side.
But: why are we
comparing? There should be no comparison! For all of human history,
working was the norm; that’s how human beings survived.
Most Americans support
a basic safety net for the very unfortunate. But for healthy,
able-bodied women? While it’s possible to make a mistake and have
one child with an irresponsible man, a 21-year-old shouldn’t risk
this again unless she can afford to raise two children (ages 1 and
4) herself. There should be no government incentive to be
irresponsible.
The average
Massachusetts welfare recipient, if she takes advantage of every
available program, gets $20 an hour, which includes cash (EBT
cards), food stamps (plus free government dairy products) and
Medicaid. Forty-four percent of Massachusetts recipients get Section
8 housing; others get fuel assistance. We know from recent
revelations about EBT card fraud that some of them had enough left
over for out-of-state vacations, manicures and drugs, with thousands
of dollars carried on the cards as surplus after essential spending.
Never mind the fraud,
though, which is another entire column. The point of this Cato study
is that, while all working people can compare our pay to welfare
payments — perhaps favorably, perhaps not — the big difference is
that we are working for ours and for theirs, too.
Some of the states that
have the highest levels of benefits are, not surprisingly, the
states that have the highest per capita tax burdens. Our
Massachusetts has the second-highest welfare benefits (after
Hawaii), and the second-lowest work participation after waivers from
“workfare” in the nation, and the fourth-highest tax burden.
Connecticut, which has the highest per capita tax burden, is third
in welfare benefits. New York and New Jersey, second- and
third-highest tax burdens, rank seventh and fifth in welfare
benefits. In these states, we taxpayers are enablers of an addiction
to dependency.
People who struggle to
support their families, sometimes with jobs that are very hard and
not much fun, can reasonably resent their tax dollars going to
reward not-working welfare recipients. But their resentment should
be aimed mostly at the politicians who create these rewards for not
working; besides being unfair to those who carry them, they’re not
doing the non-working poor any favors by fostering entire lives,
even generations, of dependency.
Cato argues that
“despite the stereotypes, there is no evidence that people receiving
welfare are ‘lazy.’ ... The choice of welfare over work is often a
rational decision based on the economic incentives presented. ...
The high level of benefits acts as a disincentive for work. Welfare
currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after
accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit.”
Cato concludes its
study with these recommendations: “If Congress and state
legislatures are serious about reducing welfare dependence and
rewarding work, they should consider strengthening welfare work
requirements, removing exemptions, and narrowing the definition of
work.
“Moreover, states
should consider ways to shrink the gap between the value of welfare
and work by reducing current benefit levels and tightening
eligibility requirements”.
On Labor Day, those of
us who work, whether we love or hate our jobs, know the pride of
making our own way, and that’s worth celebrating.
