Those vile $*#@ing wankers over at the Cato Institute have updated an old study claiming that welfare is just so generous that there's no reason for recipients to work. Josh Barro, decided non-liberal,
dismantles it in three easy steps:
1. Very few people actually qualify for all eight of the programs Cato looks at. Particularly, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (cash welfare) and housing assistance can provide some very expensive benefits. But fewer than two million households get TANF and only about four million get housing assistance. It is much more typical for a welfare beneficiary to be getting SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid (health insurance), but no assistance with housing or cash. So, the typical welfare benefit is much lower than Cato makes out, making staying on welfare less appealing.
2. Welfare benefits for single adults are much less generous than those for women with children.
3. Not all benefits are lost when a welfare recipient starts working. SNAP benefits phase out gradually with rising income. People who go back to work don't necessarily lose health benefits, either. Some get new health benefits through work. The children of low-income uninsured workers qualify for the Children's Health Insurance Program in most states. In some states, low-income working adults even qualify for Medicaid. So, going back to work doesn't mean nearly the loss of benefits that Cato implies.
Now, even if the report's claims were true and welfare routinely paid better than work, cutting things like food stamps and Medicaid and housing assistance wouldn't be the one and only answer. We could also raise the minimum wage so that a minimum wage didn't involve living in poverty for so many workers. But the evildoers over at Cato aren't so much concerned with that making work pay—or creating jobs so that there weren't three jobseekers for every available job—they're just concerned with shredding the safety net a little more.
Tell the House and the Senate to raise the minimum wage to $10.10.