Welfare Can Make More Sense than Work
Most decisions in life are the result of a cost-benefit analysis. When residents in Connecticut consider getting a job, they assume they would be better off having a job than not. They’d be wrong. Because in Connecticut, it pays not to work.
Next Monday, the Cato Institute will release a new study looking at the state-by-state value of welfare. Nationwide, our study found that the value of benefits for a typical recipient family ranged from a high of $49,175 in Hawaii to a low of $16,984 in Mississippi.
In Connecticut, a mother with two children participating in seven major welfare programs (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, housing assistance, utility assistance and free commodities) could receive a package of benefits worth $38,761, the fourth highest in the nation. Only Hawaii, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia provided more generous benefits.
When it comes to gauging the value of welfare benefits, it is important to remember that they are not taxed, while wages are. In fact, in some ways, the highest marginal tax rates anywhere are not for millionaires, but for someone leaving welfare and taking a job.
Therefore, a mother with two children in Connecticut would have to earn $21.33 per hour for her family to be better off than they would be on welfare. That’s more than the average entry-level salary for a teacher or secretary. In fact, it is more than 107 percent of Connecticut’s median salary.
Have you noticed that the American Male is virtually eliminated from these so called ‘help’ programs?
You lost your good paying job due to 0 Depression. Hard time finding a new one. You were working 60+ hrs a week sometimes 10 days in a row. You develop type 2 Diabetes because of this live on fast food life style. 0 Depression gets your job.
IND Medicaid has more than 1 program, a general 1 and a Breast and Cervical Cancer one. Neither of the programs cover adult US Males who are sick. And if the male who is working a PT job that pays over a certain amount the woman and children are cut off.
When your wife just had a masectomy stage 3 cancer, and is on her third round of Chemo you do what you have to do, keep working the crappy job that pays to little. Because the minute you make more, her health care is gone! BTW you US MALE who are a type 2 Diabetic are not covered for any health care, and your PT job does not provide health ins. So you face 0’care fines or imprisonment! And the wife with stage 3 breast cancer is left to take care of the 12 year old and provide food, rent and utilities, etc. Her career in health care CNA will not let her go back to work until she is done with the year long chemo. CRAZY