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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the suppresion-of-the-proletariat dept.

Analysis of a study (PDF) carried by UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education shows that isn't the poor people won't work but the work they do can't sustain them. As a blog on WaPo puts it:

We often make assumptions about people on public assistance, about the woman in the checkout line with an EBT card, or the family who lives in public housing. [...] We assume, at our most skeptical, that poor people need help above all because they haven't tried to help themselves — they haven't bothered to find work.

The reality, though, is that a tremendous share of people who rely on government programs designed for the poor in fact work — they just don't make enough at it to cover their basic living expenses. According to the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, 73 percent of people who benefit from major public assistance programs in the U.S. live in a working family where at least one adult earns the household some money.

This picture casts the culprit in a different light: 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 [food stamps, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, income supports through welfare], 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).

The workers relying the most on social programs: Fast Food (52%), Home Care (48%), Child Care (46%) and Part-time college students (25%).

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by aclarke on Wednesday April 15 2015, @01:09PM

    by aclarke (2049) on Wednesday April 15 2015, @01:09PM (#170935) Homepage
    The more I think about the problems surrounding poverty and the cost of living, the more I'm coming around to the idea of Unconditional Basic Income [wikipedia.org]. Scrap all the overhead of each one of these costly social programs to benefit this or that subgroup. Provide everyone in the country with enough money to allow them to live at a humane level. I'm not saying this idea is perfect, but it would go a long way towards providing for families, for example, by acknowledging that although parenting doesn't pay well, it's a critical part of our social structure. Caring for the elderly, community service, volunteering as a crosswalk guard for schoolchildren, and many other activities also fall into this category. It would also be an assistance to those who are struggling due to physical or mental handicaps.

    Sure, some people will sit around on their ass and watch TV and do drugs all day, but likely they weren't contributing members of the job force anyway. Maybe there's someone else who actually wants to work who can take their place. Yeah, some people are just lazy, but there are already lazy people scamming the current system.

    I'd like to see most of our societies doing a better job of recognizing and genuinely helping those who are falling behind.
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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @02:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @02:01PM (#170960)

    The thing about 'basic income' is where do you get the money. Money is easy I can print more (which is inflationary). But where do you get the VALUE of that money? Someone has to do work to create value. Where does it come from? It most certainly will not be from the 1%rs.

    This is not a new idea I have found things as far back as the New deal. Further if I probably looked harder. It is an interesting idea until you dig into where does the value to give to these people come from. This would just end up as yet another underfunded tax upon the rapidly shrinking middle class.

    These companies have reacted to the particularly odd regulatory environment we have created where there are particular quotas to match up. These jobs are not meant to be lifetime jobs. They are meant to be in between jobs. Basically they are meant to be the training wheels of jobs. They have become lifetime jobs as all the other jobs were allowed to leave thru things like NAFTA.

  • (Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Wednesday April 15 2015, @02:47PM

    by Kromagv0 (1825) on Wednesday April 15 2015, @02:47PM (#170978) Homepage

    While I don't really agree with you I would say that as a society it would be worth having that discussion. My initial instinct is to say that it will be an absolute failure and would look at public schools as an example but it may be a workable solution. I would think that one requirement to make it workable would be much tougher citizenship requirements such that one couldn't just pop a baby out on US soil and have that child be a citizen. A free continuous stream of income would seem to be too big of a draw as there is the "anchor baby" problem that keeps getting brought up and this would seem to only exacerbate it.
     
    Personally I would prefer that individuals who are of the age of majority be required to work and then provide them with the essentials. Even if it is government make work like picking up roadside trash, mowing the medians and ditches, patching roads, maintaining and cleaning public spaces, etc. Those who don't want to work can choose to go off and die but I wouldn't want to support someone who doesn't want to be a productive member of society. At the same time I do understand that there are people who really can't take care of themselves and yes we as a society should take care of them but there aren't that many of these people.

    --
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    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:38PM (#171073)

      The problem with that is that it's Protestant work ethic BS. The vast majority of people given the choice won't sit around doing nothing. What they do do might not be a "job" in the way our current society is set up. Parenting and taking care of elderly relatives is two examples given in this thread. Creating art, even as a successful and popular artist, also tends to not pay well enough to do without a guaranteed income (bestselling authors tend to have day jobs to help pay the bills, although part of that was getting health care pre-ACA). People who are not worried about where their next meal is coming from can and will take risks and innovate. Forcing them to do make-work isn't just cruel, it's a waste.

  • (Score: 2) by bootsy on Wednesday April 15 2015, @02:48PM

    by bootsy (3440) on Wednesday April 15 2015, @02:48PM (#170979)

    Part of the problem with this approach is that you have to also provide free social housing. Otherwise any boost in income will just be absorbed by landlords and the money shifts to people who already have it. This has been observed many times and you see it in London.

    The other issue is that a minority of people are sensible enough to live well of a low income. I've met people that have including myself as student but then I didn't drink or smoke and I ate cheap food that I prepared myself. I new one guy who has a great lifestyle despite a low income but he eats a lot of foraged food such as nettles, elderflower, dandelion leaves etc. If you don't have the skills to prepare food yourself everything costs more and in the UK at least the cost of transport rises far faster than inflation. If you are poor and looking for a job and have to travel to interviews this just kills you. There is only so much walking you can do.

    Statistically the poor tend to have more children as well which over generations make the problem worse.

    It's a really hard problem to crack and people have been pondering it for centuries.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @04:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @04:22PM (#171041)

    Sure, some people will sit around on their ass and watch TV and do drugs all day, but likely they weren't contributing members of the job force anyway. Maybe there's someone else who actually wants to work who can take their place. Yeah, some people are just lazy, but there are already lazy people scamming the current system.

    It wasn't that long ago that we had a story about good social safety nets make people more likely [soylentnews.org] to want to work, so a basic income would actually reduce the number of people simply living off the basic income, provided there actually exist jobs for them to work.