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How dare you say such a thing. My husband walked out on me and our kids. He quit a very good job in law enforcement and moved to another state to avoid paying child support. At the time I had a part time job and was finishing an advanced degree. I had to quit school and find a full time job FAST. I never had kids when I was poor, but I still had kids when I became poor. I didn't ask for, or receive any government benefits but I would have been forced to if not for the fact that I had wonderful friends who watched my kids for free while I worked. So please take that 'responsibility' story and put it where the sun don't shine because you never walked in my shoes and you have no idea how quickly you can find yourself in a very desperate financial situation.
Sorry... a spouse (husband OR wife) walking out like that doesn't just happen out of the blue. There are always indications. Maybe you weren't paying attention.
Because as he explained taxpayers are subsidizing employers.
No, taxpayers are not subsidizing employers.
Your premise is flawed, since its based on some kind of living wage nonsense.
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Originally Posted by 2sleepy
I have yet to hear any 'free market' folks railing about "why do we subsidize employees with welfare benefits when all it does is allow companies to pay less than market rate wages" That is a gross distortion of the way a 'free market' works.
Prove that they're paying less than "market rate wages."
I for one would gladly eliminate the 79 redundant welfare programs that cost $1.7 TRILLION annually.
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Originally Posted by TaxPhd
You could not be more wrong.
The only way the highlighted sentence could be right is if, for example, the market wage for a no-skill job was say, $15/hr., and the company figured out a way to pay only $10/hr for that labor, while compelling the taxpayer to pick up the difference. And that is absolutely NOT happening.
No-skill labor is being paid MORE than market rate in the US, due to minimum wage regulations, not LESS.
That you can't get this simple issue correct calls into question everything you post.
Wouldn't all this proving result in further diminished disposable income?
No.
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Originally Posted by Reynard32
Sounds a little bit counter-productive. The traditional means of establishing eligibility seem a lot more efficient to me.
It's real simple:
The Poorâ„¢: I want Food Stamps. Gov Employee: Do you reside in a multi-household? The Poorâ„¢: No. Gov Employee: Then you are **DENIED ** since you have not done all that you can do. Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what can you do for your country. Bring us proof that you reside in a multi-household, and you can reapply.
....28 days later....
The Poorâ„¢: I want Food Stamps. Gov Employee: Do you reside in a non-related multi-household? The Poorâ„¢Yes, here's a notarized copy of the lease agreement or mortgage documents and deeds, plus notarized affidavits proving that we share living accommodations with another household. Gov Employee: Excellent. Unfortunately you are **DENIED ** since your Disposable Income has increased due to the fact that you now share living expenses...and you can afford to pay for your own food....have a cluckety-cluck-cluck day.
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Originally Posted by InformedConsent
Roommates living in a $36,000 income household don't need to live on a park bench.
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Originally Posted by Reynard32
You can post and post and post that all day long, and it'll still be just a bunch of pointless nonsense.
Why? Is the math too complicated for you?
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Originally Posted by InformedConsent
Why? Why can't low-income earners live with roommates to split living expenses and eliminate unnecessary spending to live within their means?
I am so sick of the Obama crybabies wimpering along how they can't survive on minimum wages all the while voting in the left wing communist idiots that is destroying everything we had before.
Got news for you if you are able bodied and barely making it on minimum wage. I don't care. I don't care if you are hungry and dying in the street because what part of "I don't give a damn about you" do you have trouble understanding?
If you don't like starvation do what I did back in the early 1970's and get two jobs so you could pay rent and eat if that is what it takes!
I work hard, I work long and I have what I need and if you think you are somehow entitled to a part of my work product because somehow it is unfair, unfair that I have a lot and you have a little, you can just go to hell!
74.5 percent of the 7.45 million workers in construction and extraction jobs are native-born workers (does not include legal immigrant workers). I see it every day and in the southeast I would estimate closer to 50% of construction workers are illegals.
And clue in for the idiots; these illegal construction workers earn a lot more than minimum wage earning closer to $14/hr but these are hard jobs outside the kitchen of the local McDonald's and our precious little snowflakes were never brought up to to hard work. Hard work is against the constitution and stuff.
Stop all welfare, food stamps and public housing today. Don't like living under an underpass? The answer is simple, go out and get two jobs. Get two jobs and a part time job if that is what it takes.
I am so sick and tired of the blood suckers on the economy.
YOU TELL "EM-- $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance .
Before we look at the details, a heartfelt plea from the Save the CEO’s Charitable Trust: There’s so much suffering in the world. It can all get pretty overwhelming sometimes. Consider, for a moment the sorrow in the eyes of a CEO who’s just found out that his end-of-year bonus is only going to be a paltry $2.3 million.
It's pretty clear that your "grasp" is tenuous at best.
Society also determines there is a floor, how is one thing market manipulation and the other just society having a bleeding heart? All those factors make up the market conditions.
I chose not to mention it because while an interesting summary of a study (note that the linked article ISN'T the study in question, but only a summary) that addresses the depression in wages attributable to Wal-Mart, it doesn't at all address the issue under discussion - whether taxpayers subsidize the labor costs of businesses such as Wal-Mart.
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So how about answering this: If Walmart, due to their wage scale, lowers local wages by up to 10% and you claim that there is a living wage floor, below which the government provides benefits - then how can you claim that taxpayers didn't foot the bill when they had to make up for that 10% wage cut by providing a dollar for dollar increase in government benefits?
First, I don't claim that there is a "living wage" floor. You didn't get that from what I wrote.
Second, taxpayers absolutely foot the bill for any "safety net" benefits provided. I never said otherwise. What I DID say was that providing benefits doesn't result in Wal-Mart's labor cost being subsidized. The only way for their labor cost to be subsidized is if they are paying LESS than the market rate for no-skill labor. And there is NO Wal-Mart anywhere that pays less than market rate. In fact, in locations where Wal-Mart employees are making minimum wage, it's safe to say that they are being paid MORE than market rate.
Taxpayers will be paying something for Joe no-skill, up until the time that he earns more than the total amount of the societally determined safety net. The more Joe earns, the less cost there is to the taxpayers. But there is NO situation where the taxpayer is subsidizing Wal-Mart. Remember, every dollar that Wal-Mart pays to Joe represents a dollar that the taxpayer DOESN'T have to pay. Society should be grateful that places like Wal-Mart provide jobs for no-skill workers, as a dollar earned by those workers is a dollar saved by the taxpayer.
Sounds like a lot of projection on your part. Can you provide any facts at all that support the fact that the true free market (not crony capitalism w/government and corporations having each other's back) does anything other than improve the lives of everyone involved?
Poor boy! Unfettered free-market capitalism is about the worst economic system possible. Please try to keep in mind that your precious markets are totally amoral. They are quite capable of reaching and then persisting in all manner of socially abusive and destructive equilibria. It is also true that some men are so venal as to crave money above all else, including the lives and well-being of their neighbors. These are two reasons why no one in the world actually uses free-market capitalism any more.
The only way the highlighted sentence could be right is if, for example, the market wage for a no-skill job was say, $15/hr., and the company figured out a way to pay only $10/hr for that labor, while compelling the taxpayer to pick up the difference. And that is absolutely NOT happening.
Open your eyes and ears. Externalization of costs is exactly what's happening. Because they hold all of the power in relevant labor markets, employers can cut wages for particularly undifferentiated workers to well below subsistence levels without adverse market effects, and the resulting subsistence deficit will then be financed by the taxpayer instead of by the officers and shareholders who reap the profit of it all. It's a bit like going out for beers with your buddies and then skipping out the back door before the check arrives.
Wanting to keep what one earns makes one a right-wing and selfish sociophobe?
More often, being a right-wing selfish sociophobe leads people to want and claim what they have not earned and have no actual right to at all. This is sadly very common these days.
Poor boy! Unfettered free-market capitalism is about the worst economic system possible. Please try to keep in mind that your precious markets are totally amoral. They are quite capable of reaching and then persisting in all manner of socially abusive and destructive equilibria. It is also true that some men are so venal as to crave money above all else, including the lives and well-being of their neighbors. These are two reasons why no one in the world actually uses free-market capitalism any more.
No, the reason there is no longer a truly free market economy is due to the venal need of politicians for money and power, they slip in between the sheets with big corporations to regulate and legislate the true free market into oblivion.
Being amoral is hardly a negative attribute. There is nothing IMMORAL about the free market, in fact it is the only system that relies solely on the participants in the system to determine what goods or services will succeed or fail.
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