From the always interesting Zero Hedge - When Work Is Punished: The Tragedy Of America's Welfare State:
for increasingly more it is now more lucrative - in the form of actual disposable income - to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. This is graphically, and very painfully confirmed, in the below chart from Gary Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (a state best known for its broke capital Harrisburg). As quantified, and explained by Alexander, "the single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045."
I have to observe from the chart that there doesn't seem much point to even working at all since $0 income plus welfare works out to about the same as earning $55,000 without any government benefits.
That point hasn't been lost on the citizenry either:
But perhaps the scariest chart in the entire presentation is the following summarizing the unsustainable welfare burden on current taxpayers:
- For every 1.65 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance
- For every 1.25 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance or works for the government.
I like to think of it as uninvited guests at the nation's dinner tables. If you have a job and your spouse has a part time job, when you sit down to dinner you have a welfare moocher or a government bureaucrat sitting down with you. Pass the potatoes Barack, and don't scarf all the chicken!
