Comments on: Welfare Versus Minimum Wage

By: guest

guest — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:53:00 +0000

yea I’m an environmental scientist and a republican wrap your head around that. I’m glad you found a happy life for you and your daughter but get off welfare then! Or at least decrease your dependency on it. There’s plenty of people out there who aren’t living out your freedom but are struggling to survive. Don’t be selfish man.

By: Dim Da Skyy

Dim Da Skyy — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:34:00 +0000

I am a single father with a BA in Philosophy. After several years looking for work, I realized I was not going to find a high paying job with my degree. With this understanding came a nervous breakdown. I began seeing a therapist who helped me recieve benifits. I now recieve 1300 dollars a month disability, hud housing , and many other entitlements ect. I live in Colorado in a 1200 square foot mountain A frame near Conifer. I pay 300 dollars of the 1200 dollar rent payment and take on freelance writing jobs and sell firewood to bring in additional income. I shop at Whole Foods and pay for organic health food with my 400 dollar foodstamp card. I have plenty of time to home school my daughter, read Nietche and go on hikes. Say what you wil about entitlements but for me it spells FREEDOM…. Now lets watch a Republicans head implode taking in that bit of info lol …wait I also use medical marijuana
and drive a Prius .)(()())))))))))))))))

By: Zach S

Zach S — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 23:09:00 +0000

You sound like a typical welfare recipient. Work more and buy some new glasses!

By: Greg

Greg — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 11:15:41 +0000

I’m British, we have a minimum wage now that is about six quid an hour, there has been no evidence of a decrease in jobs because of wage increases.

By: ReasonableStranger

ReasonableStranger — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 21:21:35 +0000

Some of these charts need to be about 50% larger. My eyes aren’t what they used to be and will be eye more tore up after straining to gleam details of these tiny graphics. Please enlarge! Thanks.

By: Caterina Pryde

Caterina Pryde — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 06:24:38 +0000

It’s a 4 person family, not one or two, to make the poverty line

By: terry

terry — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:27:49 +0000

Duran brings up the old “Raise minimum wage to $1000/hr…” line.

Nobody has ever seriously suggested raising minimum wage to $1000 (or even $50) per hour. The idea of a minimum wage is to provide at least a subsistence life for those who work.

Then comes the bit about how “minimum wage is actually a terrible idea…”

In an ideal society, I would agree that a minimum wage is a bad idea. But we live today in highly regulated societies. Ideally, if someone’s labor is worth only, say, $1 per hour, employers should be able to pay them $1 per hour. Similarly – and here’s the rub – builders and landlords should also be free to build and rent housing affordable to the $1-per-hour worker.

But our regulated societies protect incumbent property owners from a free market and do not allow housing of the quality available to the $1 worker, and rather imposes middle class housing standards on everyone, whether or nota person can afford it.

I would couple minimum wages to minimum housing standards – neither or both. So if you want a free market in labor, a free market in housing is a prerequisite.

By: katy

katy — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:12:36 +0000

Jessica, I would like to point out that I work – as a single mother. My children are not yet school age and I am lucky enough to have the option (I live in Australia) to stay at home with them. One of the things that the patriarchy has done very succesfully is undermine the value of work considered to be the province of women – such as childcare, whether your own children by staying at home, or by working in a childcare centre. By saying that only people with mental and physical disabilities should be on welfare you show a lack of understanding of what it is like to try and find work that pays enough to support your family. I am not unqualified. I have completed 13 years of schooling (up to year 12 here, not sure how that translates to the US schooling system), and have qualifications in hopsitality supervision and business administration. Since becoming a single mother I have tried looking for work and to be honest, it costs me money to work. By the time I factor in childcare costs (even subsidised) and travel I end up loosing too much money. I believe apricotmuffins mentioned the benefit trap? That is the situation I find myself in. The way our benefits work here I would have to be able to go straight into a job paying a around $AU50,000 to actually make money and be able to afford a basic standard of living. By basic standard of living I mean being able to pay the rent, utilities and buy healthy food for my family. Surely that isn’t too much to ask?
As an explaination of how that works, I currently recieve $AU1068 a fortnight from the government. That keeps our head above water. Just – without our vegie garden and cooking everything from scratch it would be a lot harder. If I go to work and earn that same amount I then pay tax which takes it down to about $AU1000 say. I would be working about 4 days a week to earn that. Daycare (with subsidy) is at least $20 a day, so there is $160 a fortnight gone. Add in the rent ($540 a fortnight) and there is $700 gone. Add in transport costs at $5 a day if I can use public transport so $40 and I’ve spent $740 just to be able to work and have a roof over our heads. In summer I spend $70 a fortnight on power (no aircondtioning, just running the fridge, freezer, washing machine, lights, stove, hotwater and computer), I get by on $100 a fortnight for food. Already I’ve racked up $940 just to live with the basics. That leaves $60 to pay off any debts, or contribute to savings, or pay for extra healthcare (the govt covers most things but some things have to be paid out of pocket), or put towards being able to study…
I get that that is more than a lot of people have. I KNOW I am very lucky to live in a country where I have the choice to stay at home and raise my own children. But I just wanted to point out how very hard it can be to get yourself out off welfare and into earning and supporting yourself. I also wanted to point out that raising children is a valid choice – I see it as the governement paying me to do an important job.

By: sammie

sammie — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:30:12 +0000

i agree

By: jessica

jessica — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:50:23 +0000

No one should be on welfare unless they have a mental or physical dissability. If that statment was put to action, I assure you that more than half of the poeple on welfare would be off of welfare. With that being said, the people off of welfare would need to find work elsewhere. Most likely taking jobs that pay minimum wage, and if the money coming from that job doesn’t suffice their needs then they should take a second job. This is AMERICA! The country where everyone is established as equals. Example: Benjamin Franklin, who is also known as ‘The American Dream’, worked his way up from being a poor kid, who worked at a newspaper, to being America’s first millionare. If people are not willing to work for what they recieve then they should not recive anything, because anyone,who works,can be successful in this country. Hard working tax payers should not have to pay for lazy people, who will not work.

By: Sara

Sara — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:13:01 +0000

You know, the funny thing here is the number of middle-classed people jumping around in response of this post with “the increment will cost US!!” because the idea of them paying more is outrageous.

Now, no one hasn’t still addressed THE ACTUAL point of this post. That poor people, actual poor people can’t make a living out of the minimum wage.

Let’s just think a moment people, people having minimum standards of live is more important than your claim that only hard-workers deserve to be middle-classed like you.

Now, I pretty much disagree with “raise the wage and people will chose to work”, really. Like the problem here is people not choosing to work, a lot of people work two jobs and can’t feed their family, let alone working people on welfare.

By: Sara

Sara — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:46:05 +0000

Angela. Me thinks you are white, able-bodied, cis-woman, aren’t ya. WOman, people aren’t poor because they want to be poor. Your bubble. Tires me.

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By: Phillip Huggan

Phillip Huggan — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:42:37 +0000

Bunny, in America there isn’t even public transit to get to many of the day labour jobs that have kept me alive. Some of their State have a 5 yr lifetime welfare quote, which is incredibly progressive. In Canada my most marketable skill is probably as the bioterrorist who wipes out our civilization in the future, seriously. I don’t want that but if the choice is ever back in a bed buggy (need sleep to apply for work and ID) homeless shelter or killing Obama’s and Harper’s children with Phil-bioterror bought by Osama, those little fuckers are going to wheeeze then die.