When work isn’t enough to keep you off welfare and food stamps | Hacker News Reader

When work isn’t enough to keep you off welfare and food stamps

washingtonpost.com

37 pointsbootload19 comments

Just coming out of a situation like this there are a few thing that are important to take note of on both sides.

First even having a pretty good job in not enough to keep you above the poverty level. I worked in a trade job and was paid fairly well. In our case, though with a family of 5 you would need to make about $13.50 an hour and never miss a day of work for any reason to keep above the poverty level. We just weren't making it and were on food stamps for about a year.

On the other hand our situation was very much a life decision. We had two preschool age children and my wife preferred not to go to work. In the end I decided I just had to get a better job. I went back to school(which meant I got even more government money) and was eventually able to double my salary.

I don't know if I have any point other than that there is no black and white. It is a nuanced situation and we should not dehumanize either side.

"Taxpayers are spending a lot of money subsidizing not people who won't work, but industries that don't pay their workers a living wage"

The hidden assumption in that statement is that those industries would pay their workers more if they didn't have access to welfare. This is economically dubious; if anything, by substituting for income, welfare decreases demand for work and thus increases salaries.

Without welfare, those workers would likely work longer hours for less hourly pay.

"Taxpayers are spending a lot of money subsidizing not people who won't work, but industries that don't pay their workers a living wage. Through these four programs alone, federal and state governments spend about $150 billion a year aiding working families, according to the analysis (the authors define people who are working here as those who worked at least 10 hours a week, at least half the year)."

Obviously that kind of schedule isn't going to yield a "living income".

"...the important point here is that is quite possible to work hard in this country and still need help buying dinner"

Maybe, but not on the evidence presented here.

Perhaps it isn't always obvious in this lovely epistemic closure of the tech industry, but there's very often no more work than that. Forcing workers into laughably tiny shifts and providing no recourse except to quit the job barely covering part of their needs is par for the course.

Also don't forget that often you don't find out what tiny shift you have until the last minute so you basically have to make yourself free for full-time hours to do part-time work.

Even if there was more work available, those 10 (or 20) hours will usually be different times every day, making committing to a second job (with an equally random schedule) impossible without overlapping time slots.

Often, the biggest problem with resolving differing positions on sociopolitical topic is agreeing on the same definitions for terms so everyone can argue about the same thing. In this case, "working family" is a motivating axiom for one side while the other is bewildered at the notion that a mere 260 hours of menial work should somehow equate to a "living wage" supporting 3+ people at an internationally elevated standard of living (family of 3 at US "poverty line" of $20,000/yr is at world top 20th percentile).

The more I see arguments about this subject, the more I see the "still need help buying dinner" isn't so much having the money to buy, but having education to know what to buy.

Quit blaming the employers, if you want to set an arbitrary value for living wage then adjust the minimum wage paid or benefits granted so that individuals exceed that level.

The Federal Minimum wage is 7.25, the minimum wage paid to those on Federal contracts is 10.10 Seems one hand of the feds knows something the other doesn't. If you want business to pay these wages then quit dancing around the political hot potato and do so.

How about special local sales tax options to push up low paid worker's wages? That way all the altruistic types out there can contribute each time they purchase their seven dollar latte? How it works is this, for every hour the low paid worker works at an approved job the local government adds an amount sufficient to equal a living hourly wage they failed to mandate.

Regardless of the down vote brigade, I do agree with another poster that we should look at many of these companies as removing the whole or partial burden to the tax payer.

Yet we must also consider one other item, a great many people don't want to work, either from laziness, mental illness, or sense of entitlement. Which means some obtain jobs and put little effort into them going from one employer to another and off and on assistance. How do you pay a living wage to these people?

People are all incredibly generous when it comes to telling others what they should pay employees without ever experiencing personnel issues at this skill level. Your in a whole different world here. If you want to identify those who are busting their butts to change their lives the easiest way is finding who is working more than one job.

The political hot potato gets tossed around because business claim that increasing the minimum wage will cause the end of civilization as we know it, despite evidence from other countries that this is not a thing.

I am also not sure why you put "laziness, mental illness and a sense of entitlement" in with "people who do not want to work". Would you say "a great many people do not want to work because of laziness or disability". If not, then do not put mental illness in that bracket, quite aside from the fact that "A great many" is a vague term, with little backing from evidence

> The Federal Minimum wage is 7.25, the minimum wage paid to those on Federal contracts is 10.10 Seems one hand of the feds knows something the other doesn't.

The minimum wage on Federal contracts can be set by executive order by the President. Congress has to set the national one, hence the disparity.

http://hr.blr.com/HR-news/Compensation/Minimum-Wage/Final-ru...

> Quit blaming the employers, if you want to set an arbitrary value for living wage then adjust the minimum wage paid or benefits granted so that individuals exceed that level.

This however, fails to solve the problem.

If you have 10 people earning $7/hour minimum wage, but you need $15/hour to make it... raising the minimum wage to $15/hour won't fix the problem.

The employers simply fire/layoff 5 of those, and pay about what they were paying before. All we've done is shift the same amount of money to fewer people. In time, it might be true that those 5 people earn enough to boost the economy, but those effects won't occur for months or years.

>Quit blaming the employers

I don't think it's the employer's fault. They're just playing the game by the rules.

>people don't want to work..

Sure, and some people can't work.

>How do you pay a living wage to these people?

How or why? How? The same way that other people get assistance. Why? I believe that there's a basic level of human decency we can and should afford to any lawful citizen regardless of their past or present. That we have enough to help life up those that can't or won't lift up themselves. Why do I believe that? A crusty old and totally thinned down Protestant work ethic that says "Everyone, down deep, has a job to do."

> Yet we must also consider one other item, a great many people don't want to work, either from laziness, mental illness, or sense of entitlement. Which means some obtain jobs and put little effort into them going from one employer to another and off and on assistance. How do you pay a living wage to these people?

Maybe you should read past the first paragraph?

Why does it seem every job has to pay a living wage? What ever happened to starter jobs? Some jobs just aren't worth a lot of money; this isn't the employers fault.

<sarcasm> But hey, the problem will solve itself once the government teaches "everyone to code!" </sarcasm>

Seriously, though, why don't we MAKE anything anymore? Why don't we make stuff and teach people voc-tech skills so that they CAN earn a living wage? Not everyone wants to or has the skills to go to college, so let's work with the skills and interests that they DO have and help them that way.

Another way to look at this is that the employer is helping the state pay less in benefits. I don't see why the alternative for these people is always considered to be a higher paying job. All else being equal, if they could get a higher paying job, they would. If you consider the alternative for these people as having no job, then the state benefits greatly even from marginal employment provided by the employer.

Another way to look at this is that the State is making it possible for the employer to pay less for labor than they otherwise would.

As a thought experiment, imagine the State promising that so long as you work, it would top off hourly income such that you're guaranteed $12/hr. What is the likely result? Every employer drops their pay of people making less than that amount to the legal minimum wage, and the government is effectively subsidizing and encouraging companies to use low wage labor over high wage labor or capital.

Unless you think companies are driven by goodwill and not the profit motive, this is the more significant effect.

This is exactly what I came here to say. When considering market forces at a high level, no effect occurs in a vacuum. If the government subsidizes farming, then food prices WILL go down (which is arguably a good). But subsidizing fast-food workers just means the fast food will now become cost-competitive with the healthy food because the fast-food employer can afford to pay less for the job and still have job applicants.

>Another way to look at this is that the State is making it possible for the employer to pay less for labor than they otherwise would.

Something that opponents of the welfare state have said from the begging.

How about because the highest goal of a society is the welfare of it's citizens and not what is most expedient for those in power/with the all the wealth.

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