I see the same thing in the country counties of western and northwestern Michigan. Welfare pays better than jobs. At lot of folks are enterprising, they’re more than willing to work under the table. The issue for them isn’t that they don’t want to work, it’s that they don’t want to report income and see their benefits disappear.
The only way to stop this is to substantially reduce the amount of welfare people receive. The problem with that is that businesses have become, on some level, dependent on welfare. Grocery stores are dependent on the overly generous food stamp benefits people get. I once looked up how much my family would get if we qualified for food stamps. It was more than we spend out of our own pocket. Grocery stores are reaping the benefit of these over payments. So are landlords, which can guarantee themselves a rent check each month through Section 8 housing. Those people are going to fight against cutting back as much as the recipients.
Ultimately with an $18 trillion debt, fast approaching $20 trillion, we cannot keep paying welfare benefits forever. No doubt, there are other expenditures that have contributed to the debt. Those need to be cut too. But we can’t provide food stamps for a family of six that is over and above what a typical middle class family of six pays on groceries. People won’t starve, they’ll shop sales like I do.
An interesting aside: The grocery store where I shop has a bunch of VASTLY OVERPRICED staple items near the registers, instead of impulse-buy items.
Those are clearly for the "I-don't-give-a-crap-about-cost-it's-free-to-me" crowd.
If you go deeper into the store, you can get the same items at 1/2, 1/4, even 1/8th the price.
“businesses have become, on some level, dependent on welfare”
That’s the nub.
One of those businesses is the media which controls the ‘narrative’ and would, like other businesses, lose money from a cut in government debt subsidized consumer spending.
So ‘no one is talking’.
It will certainly be too late for talk after President Warren loots the wealth of the country and dismantles our military to pay for our un-unique Bread and Circuses.