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| Saturday, May 18, 2013 |
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I know that domestic workers in the old days used to rely on government aid programs in order to survive and continue in jobs in their communities (and, by “old days” I mean in the 70s and 80s, not the “real” old days) — got that from a lecture I listened to by someone related to a number of them — this post brought that to mind. |
“the cost doubled to reach $68 billion in 2010 — more than a third of the amount the U.S. government received in corporate income tax” Or, 4.6% of total federal income tax receipts for 2010. Compare this with $685.1 billion in military expenditures, or 350% of the amount the U.S. government received in corporate income tax. |
Devyn: the incentives or disincentives would not affect employers very much, but would have more of an influence on the workers and recipients of food stamps, and young people who haven’t entered the work force yet but whose parents/relatives or parents of friends are receiving food stamps. Being such a well-known source of supplemental income, food stamps are a disincentive for many future workers to seek (or train for) a higher paying job, or demand higher wages. Many workers, or future workers who haven’t graduated high schol, would “settle” for the lower paying job knowing that they can get food stamps, or “settle” by not demanding (as a group, by voting with their feet) higher wages. The main reason an employer gets away with paying only “y” for certain jobs is that there is a supply of workers willing to take that job for only “y”. The cost of labor isn’t determined so much by how much employers are willing to pay, as it is by the law of supply and demand. If a drug company could hire a PhD research scientist for only $10,000/year, they would. One of the big reasons for the wages of low-paying jobs not keeping up with inflation is the supply of illegal immigrants who are willing to work for only “y”. This supply side issue has much more effect than food stamps. On the other side, in a growing economy, if employers’ demand for workers exceeds the supply of people who are willing to work for only “y”, then the law of supply-and-demand would force the employers to offer more than “y”. PS, thanks for finally admitting to being a liberal. |
“One of the big reasons for the wages of low-paying jobs not keeping up with inflation is the supply of illegal immigrants who are willing to work for only “y”. This supply side issue has much more effect than food stamps. On the other side, in a growing economy, if employers’ demand for workers exceeds the supply of people who are willing to work for only “y”, then the law of supply-and-demand would force the employers to offer more than “y”.” This is unquestionably true. But, that is precisely what the article Devyn links to is saying: the food stamp program is artificially helping to keep the workers at a lower wage by making it possible for them to survive on the lower wages. In the absence of the food stamp program, workers would arguably refuse to work for wages that did not pay them enough to live on. But since the food stamps are making up the difference, the workers are willing to take the jobs at that pay. The real problem is this: “That’s an increase of 74 percent since 2007, just before the financial crisis and a deep recession led to mass job losses.” That kind of increase is unsustainable. And when you combine that with the increased utilization of other government programs like social security and medicare, you have a system that is going to collapse. We need to find a way to get more private sector solutions to these problems. I don’t think that means cutting back on food stamps, because that’s not a going to create any more jobs, at least in the short term. |
So if they are starving, people will hold out for higher wages. Let me know how that works out. The gaping hole in Americal politics is social justice. We get so caught up in ideology that we allow children to go hungry (not everyone qualifies for food stamps) and people to go without health care or job training or education because it offends the political sensibilities drummed into our heads by our hoodwinking overlords. All of this simply illustrates that most people cannot think unless they are told what to think. |
funny, I’ve never met a hoodwinking overlord. What does one look like? That’s just a bunch of rhetoric from the other side of the fence, Bradley. You can’t just cry “social justice” and act like that solves all the problems. How are you going to feed those hungry children if the economy takes another dive and the number of people on food stamps rise another 74%? If there’s no money to pay for the food then there’s no food to feed the hungry. Figure out a way to get the economy moving and jobs for people or there will be no social justice possible. |
I was embarrassed and ashamed as a child to be hungry. My mother would get soup from a cafe to feed us–I have no idea how that evolved. In one town, we received commodities–a box with cheese and other staples. I remember being embarrassed to say “yes” when my aunt asked me if I wanted an apple. Instead, I said, “I don’t care.” Even today, I probably splurge the most on food. I probably would have been embarrassed, as well, if my mother had taken food stamps; although I would not hesitate now to use them if I had to. We have never used them, but my daughter does. And I’m glad she has that option. When I worked at Wal-Mart, many young women came in with their food stamps and WIC stuff and coupons and they were alert and careful in their purchases. They were feeding their kids. All that being said, Devyn, I think you make a good point. And I wonder. Here in Cedar City, the wages are notoriously low, even though we do seem to attract factories and companies who probably pay more elsewhere. I can’t make a conclusion based on what’s been said here. But it’s an interesting point. Are we headed for a total welfare state? And how is that liberal, Book? His point sounds more like a conservative one to me. Maybe I missed something. |
MCQ and I disagree a lot but I do agree that the ultimate anti-poverty program is a robust economy. The idea that 46MM Americans are on foodstamps and this number is up 74% since 2007 is a real problem for the US. I am not opposed to the food stamp program I just wish that our economy was better so fewer people had to rely on government aid. I find that I don’t really understand what the term “social justice” as used by the far left really means. To me social justice is when folks can get jobs and take care of themselves and prosper. Nobody is really prospering when they either by choice or circumstances is on food stamps. |
I would not define D as a liberal. He is more like a typical moderate with mixed views on different issues. |
We should have had a bigger and more effective stimulus package. That would have kept people working in areas of the economy that have been hardest hit such as construction and would have given us the long term benefits of lower unemployment, lower rates of food stamp recipients, and improved infrastructure going forward. |
The reliance on Foodstamps is completely linked to low-wage jobs. And I feel that many of these low-wage jobs are linked to Right to Work states such as Utah. But low wages aren’t the only problem. We also have to consider under-employment. Like annegb, here in St. George and Hurricane, the wages are low. I used to commute to Mesquite, NV everyday for a decent paying job. It had benefits and a high enough wage that even after fuel I was able to pay all my bills and food expenses without aid. Now that I’ve been unemployed for nearly a year, my wife works 20 hours a week at the college and I’m hoping and praying that I get a 35 hour a week job for 8 dollars an hour. At the same time, I’m trying to get my associates degree and she her bachelors. If I got the job, we’d make enough to pay rent and bills, but not food. |
1. Stephen M (Ethesis) – so History repeats itself 2. John Roberts – and your point is? 3. Bookslinger – Happy to admit to having liberal tendencies (at least socially). I think MCQ had a good view on your comment. 4. MCQ – yes we are in a bit of a pickle 5. Bradley – are there that many starving people in the US? Not sure how any of this demonstrates we cannot think? 6. MCQ – “I’ve never met a hoodwinking overlord. What does one look like?” I wondered that as well. |
7. annegb – thanks Anne, it is clear that there are times when the social programs are needed. And to your point, certainly not liberal or conservative, but a bit of both. 8. bbell – good points and I agree that I am a moderate 11. The Brother of Jared – Interesting link to right to work states. However, there are big challenges in unionized states as well. |
“We should have had a bigger and more effective stimulus package.” I don’t think it needed to be bigger, but directing all the money to banks and other financial institutions was a mistake. Now the banks are sitting on tons of cash and refusing to loan money to all except those with AAA credit. That is not going to get the economy moving. the government should have used existing agencies to make low interest loans diectly to those in need of the money, like small business and individuals especially in the construction and housing industries. That would have resulted in actual economic stimulus and job growth, not the stagnant cash hoarding that is going on now. |
Honestly I don’t think any type of stimulas would have helped or will help anytime soon. All the stimulus and bailouts did was prolong the length and pain of the downturn that started 3-4 years ago. We needed to take our medicine and let the market sort things out instead things got screwed up worse. I would say based on the businesses I am involved in that we are on the cusp of another recession due to the sudden drop in orders/new sales that started about the 4th of July Also another thing that needs to happen is that the regulatory burden on hiring new workers is literally stopping companies from hiring. I have met with in the last two weeks with the owners of 2 prospering MFG companies. Both told me that they will never have on the payroll more then 46-48 workers ever again due to Obamacare and other tough regulations that make having more then 50 employees financially difficult for employers. They will simply give existing workers overtime rather then hiring people. These are companies that pay well and have good benefits and they simply won’t hire due to government regulations that did not exist 4 years ago. |
MCQ, It did need to be bigger, to make up for the sudden absence of state and local spending that accompanied the downturn. As things were were simply treading water. Also it could have been directed much more towards areas where people would spend the money (multiplier effect) rather than save it (paradox of thrift). bbell, If we hadn’t had stimulus we’d have 13% unemployment and no hope of recovery. Please tell me you weren’t an econ major. |
ARJ, The real unemployment rate is 15-17%. We are already and have been for three years past your 13% number. I don’t believe in Keynesian Econ theory. We are watching the destruction of this theory before our very eyes in my view. Economics is an art with competing schools of thought not a science FWIW |
Those who subscribe to Keynesian theory said at the time that the stimulus wasn’t big enough given the size of the problem and that going too small was worse than going too big. Given that exactly what they said would happen has happened it is hard to claim that they were wrong, though people such as John Taylor have been doing logical backflips trying to prove that. |
bbell, saying things like this: “All the stimulus and bailouts did was prolong the length and pain of the downturn that started 3-4 years ago. We needed to take our medicine and let the market sort things out instead things got screwed up worse.” Seems so irresponsible to me. Even the most hard-core free-market economists don’t argue that the market can cure a crisis like the one caused by the housing bubble. A crisis of that magnitude requires intervention. It doesn’t fix itself, at least not in any kind of reasonable time period and not without extreme suffering that can easily be averted by government intervention. Also, I’m begging you, please stop using “then” when you mean “than.” It’s driving my nuts. |
Once while I was woking one full time and 2 part time jobs to make ends meet, I went to the supermarket. I was behind a woman who was paying for a decorated birhtday cake, ice cream, and other goodies for her daughter’s birthday party. She paid with food stamps. The difference is self-reliance and expecting the state to provide a certain standard of living. |
Come on, Kramer, can’t poor kids have a nice birthday? You don’t know what that woman was struggling with. Maybe she was working 2 jobs, too. I think you’re being incredibly judgemental. What “certain standard of living” precludes celebrating a little kids’ birthday? |
He’s saying she should have been working 3 jobs like him. [eyes rolling] The question is whether the purpose of his comment is more to depict the mom as a welfare queen or to pat himself on the back for his amazing work ethic. |
What really really drives me crazy are people who make judgements about public policy based on isolated incidents or some egregious examples they can cite.In my hometown paper we had an article about 10-15 winos who would sell their food stamps for cash in order to buy another bottle of mad dog. Of couse we then got a bundle of letters to the paper on how bad food stamps are. No one, of course, would try to find real statistics to see if their criticism was justified. Should our Church be judged on the basis of Mark Hoffman, Butch Cassidy and Ted Bundy? |
I worked the graveyard shift full time at a grocery store while completing a double major (in three years! Look at me!). I met all kinds of welfare recipients, have nothing but compassion for them (even the ones that try and pull a fast one on you–it’s got to be an exhausting existence) and begrudge them absolutely nothing. Let’s take the example of a WIC participant living high on the public hog. How much fun do you think it is to go to the store, fill your basket (well, “fill” is an exaggeration) with the products on the list, only to reach the register and be told, “Sorry ma’am, no Welch’s frozen juice for you–Tree Top, Seneca or the house brand only.” So you go back to the freezer, holding up the line and incurring the wrath of several Little Red Hens. Then you return only to hear, “Sorry ma’am, 12 oz cans only.” And so on. Sure, the guidelines include the fine print, but it varies from state to state and is a little arbitrary. And even if you put the correct items in your basket the first time around, you still hold up the line with all the paperwork (maybe it’s more automated these days) and run the risk of public humiliation (to say nothing of private scorn). |
“Figure out a way to get the economy moving and jobs for people or there will be no social justice possible.” 1. Bring back the United Order. Now if they’ll just let me get started on this… |
#24 – I shudder to remember those good old days when we needed WIC. Every month the rules changed regarding which brand of p-nut butter, juice and cereals were acceptable and which weren’t. The only thing more humiliating than WIC was food stamps. We used them for 3 months and were kicked off food stamps because my husband got a 5 cent an hour raise and suddenly we made too much money to qualify. But it was ok because we really, really hated how we were treated with FS. |
MCQ: My issue with Devyn’s assertion is that he misidentified the vector of the cause/effect. The food stamps change the attitude of the potential employees (“I’m not going to stay in school and qualify for a better job, and seek higher wages, because i can always get food stamps”) not the employers. The net effect may be the same, but it’s needful to see the big-picture to recognize the overarching principle: A welfare society lowers standards and keeps people down, it does not lift them up. I’m all for charity and feeding the poor, etc. But I don’t believe that gov’t should be in the charity business. It has taken charity and made it a “right”, and it is no longer charity. There is no longer a healthy charitable feeling on the part of voluntary donors (who are now the taxpayers), there is no blessing for donating voluntarily, and the recipients (and even future recipients) are degraded, disincentivized, and in too many cases made dependent. And the system just compounds the problem. The church thought through such things when it created the church welfare program shortly after FDR’s New Deal. (By blaming the employers in the dynamic, Devyn betrayed his liberal bent. ) |
Bookslinger, I have run accross individuals who are quite happy in the Marie Antoinette “Let them eat cake” world” or its modern incarnation “Let them eat Alpo” world. They do not have to deal with reality. They are quite willing to let young kids be malnurished so to protect them from the evils of a welfare state. There is an obvious reason why food stamp usage doubled in 4 years–the Recession/Depression. Private Charity and Religious Giving is just not cutting it. The reality is we live in a society where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The government has a very interesting term “very low food security” which means at least one person in the household is hungry for the year because they cannot afford food. That number increased trom 11.9 million in 2007 to 17.3 in 2008. One can find statistic after statistic to demonstrate that trend. We have food banks going broke or giving out less than they used to give. What in God’s Green Earth do you think would happen if we closed out Food Stamps and these people would show up at your local food banks. Something can happen to all of us. So here is a little test to see if the readers understand what deep poverty means. Answers found below 1. Why do many teens in poverty choose coffee over milk? Answers Bon Apetit |
I disagree about the reason they choose coffee. I think it’s because of the caffeine. They’re teenagers, they’re over milk, and coffee gets them up in the morning. Just like it does millions of rich people who also have a choice between milk and coffee. |
I read a really good book (the title escapes me now) written for school teachers to help them understand how students income levels affected their attitudes and values. One of the best parts of the book was a test you could take that would tell you if you had the life skills to make it in the very rich world, the middle class world and the very poor. I tested middle class, but had enough knowledge I could squeak by in the projects. I bombed out in the wealthy skill set. That book, which had nothing to do with politics or national education agendas, has been so valuable to my husband and I in church (understanding why someone who has nothing would squander the little money they have), and in work (understanding why upper management spends a lot of time talking about who they golfed with and very little time on actual work) that we regularly quote from it. I am convinced the practical knowledge we got from that book (wish I could remember its name) helped my husband get a promotion because he practiced talking like the upper-class and suddenly the head bosses started noticing him. Amazing. |
Annebg Your reasoning is sound especially for middle class kids. However, we had a presentation from a county nutritionist who went over the diets of the poor and how i effects kids of poverty. This was one of the problems, she inicated, because the diet of the poor tends to be very harmful. Killing hunger pangs with coffee beat the use of much healthier milk. One of the sadder things to see was that some of these kids would reuse a Starbucks cup to try to make other kids think they were drinking the expensive stuff. The other amazing thing was how bad school lunches and roach coach food is for them. I probably should have phrased the question more prfeciselyclearly |
27. Bookslinger – I don’t believe I misidentified the vector of cause/effect. I really don’t think food stamps change the attitude of potential employees. I know a lot of poor people who use food stamps and not one is one them so they can keep a low paying job. The reality is most of them don’t have a choice as they are undereducated or undertrained or don’t speak English well. What would change it? Perhaps investing in education and bumping up the minimum wage – both should force the issue a bit as companies won’t change their behavior until forced to by government mandate. |
I just don’t agree with that, Stan. As a hungry child, I never drank coffee to soothe hunger pangs. I drank it because grown-ups did. It was a right of passage; when you’re little, you get coffee with mostly milk and it becomes an acquired taste. I loved coffee! I think this fact ? has more sociological and cultural implications than is being recognized. I also got my first booze and cigarettes from my parents. I know they’re addictive and people self-medicate with them, but I also believe that, for some crazy reason, the poor tend to smoke and drink more (which came first, the chicken or the egg?) and children do what they see their parents do. I don’t think drinking coffee is sinful. I just don’t. I don’t do it anymore, but I don’t care who does. |
MCQ I’m really tired of the argument that its the illegals fault because they are willing to work for lower wages. Are you kidding. I was watching a documentary on PBS on migrant farmers. One farmers had legal American Workers and none of them came back in the afternoon, they all said the work was to hard. This is not about illegal aliens taking American Jobs. This is about American Companies offering a fair living wage |
“I’m really tired of the argument that its the illegals fault because they are willing to work for lower wages.” Please tell me where I said that Diane. I think you’re talking to the wrong person. In fact, I’m not seeing where anyone is talking about illegals on this thread. |
MCQ One of the big reasons for the wages of low-paying jobs not keeping up with inflation is the supply of illegal immigrants who are willing to work for only “y”. This supply side issue has much more effect than food stamps. On the other side, in a growing economy, if employers’ demand for workers exceeds the supply of people who are willing to work for only “y”, then the law of supply-and-demand would force the employers to offer more than “y”.” |
