Posted on 02/18/2013 9:28:16 AM PST by ExxonPatrolUs
Economists and many policymakers generally agree that our tax and transfer systems should promote opportunity, work, saving, and education rather than consumption.
The problem is these programs often penalize people for earning that extra dollar of income.
Rather than promoting work and savings, these implicit taxes punish such otherwise positive behavior.
These penalties occur in TANF (formerly welfare), SNAP (formerly Food Stamps), Medicaid, the new health exchange subsidy, Pell grants, student loans, and unemployment compensation.
The tax code also is loaded with disincentives to work, save, and study. They include PEP and Pease (reductions in tax allowances for personal exemptions and itemized deductions), child tax credits, and the earned income tax credit.
These implicit taxes combine with explicit taxes to create incentives for many households that are often inefficient and inequitable, to say nothing of strange and anomalous.
At some income levels, families face prohibitively high penalties for moving off assistance. For instance, a single worker with children could face a steep cut in child care assistance simply for accepting a higher paying job or getting a raise.
For some, the rapid phaseout of benefits can more than offset the additional take-home pay. Asset tests in means-tested programs create similar barriers to saving.
One way couples avoid some of these penalties or taxes is to not get married. Indeed, this strategy is the major tax shelter for low- and moderate-income households with children.
Our tax and welfare system thus favors those who consider marriage optional—to be avoided if it raises taxes or reduces benefits but embraced if it comes with a financial bonus. The losers tend to be those who consider marriage a social or religious necessity.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Ya don’t say...
Next thing they will figure out.. Water is wet!
This just in: Government says Pope is Catholic!
The entire US tax/welfare system punishes productivity and rewards indolence.
Absolutely. No one who is exempt should be allowed to vote.
If you think about work like a continuum, with “Work because I love my job” on the one side and “Work to survive” on the other side, everyone would fit on that continuum. With limited exceptions, even people who enjoy their work will ramp back and take it easy once they have enough money. On the other side of the continuum, you have people who don’t enjoy work and would stop working if they could survive without working. The more Welfare and food stamps you hand out, the more you are going to let people make that choice —they would rather survive at a subsistence level (which in the US, may include cable TV and a cell phone), than work every day.
Never happen. But your right.
We should turn SNAP into something like WIC - there is a list of pre-approved foods, like milk, cheese, peas and other healthy items. No one should be able to get lobster, soda, expensive organic food and other luxuries if on food stamps.
When you pay for something, you get more of it?
Who knew!
I think this calls for a new area of study.
We can call it “Economics.”
Then, we can send reporters to Econ 101.
I fully advocate that any able body person that has received welfare or food stamps is required to pay back those benefits and if unwilling, should be placed in indentured servitude.
Yup. They should get the BAM and NOTHING ELSE.
Not fair? Get a fricking job.
(Bare Azz Minimum)
The Feds will put you in jail for feeding bears because it makes them lazy dependent creatures that begin to aggressively take what they want from the very source of the free food.
So its not that the government doesn’t fully understand this cause and effect.
I’d feel safer walking across Kodiak island without a gun, than walking through the Englewood ‘hood of Chicago with one.
I agree.
I agree.
funny when the free money and free food runs out, these people find work..
interesting concept, that.. my wife knows in Rhode Island who did just that... took the money, complained and whined for 3 years, then retrained himself.. now he is preparing tax returns for HR Block.
Buuump!
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