Posted on 03/09/2021 7:50:23 AM PST by Kaslin
Washington’s welfare-industrial complex both discourages work and leads people to expect that government will solve the problems government has created.
Even before President Biden’s new $1.9 trillion COVID “stimulus” package goes into effect, multiple news stories make clear the flaws in its approach. Washington’s welfare-industrial complex, which the “stimulus” will bloat even further, both discourages work and leads people to expect that government will solve the problems government has created.
The coronavirus pandemic caused very real economic hardship for millions of American families. But many of the well-meaning efforts to address those hardships—along with welfare expansions Democrats proposed long before COVID hit our shores—will only harm our nation, and the people the left seeks to help, by stifling our economic dynamism and saddling future generations with mountains of debt.
Last week, the Washington Post profiled individuals who lost their jobs, yet faced thousands of dollars in unanticipated tax bills. The article featured several sympathetic households, including one special-education teacher who lost his grandmother to COVID last summer, who feared they would have to pay back excess Obamacare subsidies they received last year.
But look closer, and a different picture emerges. The individuals estimated their income for 2020, which determined their eligibility for Obamacare subsidies, in the fall of 2019, before the pandemic. In many cases, that income rose, not fell, not despite layoffs and furloughs but because of them:
[They] estimated their earnings for 2020 and ended up being way off, largely because of the extra $600 a week that Congress gave unemployed people from April through July. Workers like preschool teachers, teacher’s aides, waiters, and the self-employed often ended up making more on unemployment last spring than at their regular jobs. Now they owe the government money to repay some of their health subsidy. [Emphasis mine.]
The article quoted Larry Levitt of the liberal Kaiser Family Foundation: “It would certainly be helpful if [people] didn’t have to pay back subsidies because they misstated their income.” In other words, government created a problem, by paying people more to stay home than to remain in work. The left’s “solution:” More government—in the form of subsidy forgiveness provisions located in Section 9662 of Democrats’ “stimulus” bill.
Politico recently featured a similar story about disincentives to work, focused on New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential campaign. When Bloomberg’s former campaign staffers received tax forms for 2020—which included as income housing benefits the campaign provided to them—many staffers erupted in protest:
The bloated gross incomes they have to declare in their taxes will cause them to lose out on a long list of government programs and benefits—from Obamacare subsidies to possible student loan debt forgiveness to the $1,400 checks President Joe Biden is proposing as the centerpiece of his coronavirus rescue package.
Doubtless Bloomberg’s failed campaign, like most other political campaigns, featured a large share of young individuals just out of college, who may not have understood the tax implications of receiving subsidized housing. The staffers also faced a difficult combination of circumstances last spring: Bloomberg’s campaign ended just as COVID hit, with lockdowns effectively freezing the job market, and the campaign allegedly reneged on promises it made to staffers to retain their services, and maintain their pay, through last November’s election.
But on the other hand, the staff in question received generous benefits—what some might view as a private-sector welfare state funded by the Bloomberg campaign. For such individuals to come back and expect to receive taxpayer-funded benefits in the same year looks like double-dipping. (If the former staffers’ income remains low in 2021, they could still qualify for things like the “stimulus” checks—but might have to wait to claim them on their 2021 tax returns filed next spring.)
Both stories demonstrate the insidious effects of an ever-expanding welfare state, one in which individuals believe they have an entitlement to “free” payments and services provided by others. The Post’s article both demonstrates and validates the public’s implicit bias: Despite serving as an economics reporter, Heather Long did not address the implications of paying people more to remain on unemployment than they make while working, the windfall savings individuals received in these cases, or why such individuals could not use a portion of those windfalls to repay any excess Obamacare subsidies they received.
But as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Sooner or later, all of us will start paying the costs of this bloated welfare state—a burden that our nation will bear for many generations to come.
Democrats pander to those who pay no or little taxes.
Used to work at a building across the street from which resided an enormous flock of pigeons. Wondered why so many of the nuisance birds congregated there.
One day happened to glance out the window and saw a shabbily dressed man broadcasting large quantities of bird seed around the bus stop across the street.
Understood the problem.
Welcome to Hell, gimmees. You may not recognize it at first, but you will eventually.
What about your chicks for free?
It's in Kendal county
Caption for Welfare One Mile sign....
Welfare applicant: Can somebody give me a free ride there? A mile is a long way to walk. Maybe a cold soft drink, too.
How often have you heard economists and conservatives talk about how deficit spending will ruin the US economy ??
Eventually the bills have to be paid, but most people don’t see the danger and don’t care so long as they get their piece of the welfare pie....
You want to talk about a revolution, let the economy go into a deep 1930’s style depression with surging inflation and we will see violence in the streets when the welfare train eventually stops...
IMO, until that happens we can go on spending like there is no tomorrow because no one in either party really cares...
The democrat socialist of America party doing it’s best to hide the rigged election and other screw ups with entitlement culture gig failing fast.
I heard an interview with a man who was in a government office when Obama took over.
He got all the paperwork arranged for a big pile of welfare applicants and said to his supervisor “I’ll get started on matching all of them to work possibilities and people to contact.”
His boss said an order from the top (Obama) is to stop requiring they look for work as of now. “Just keep the accounts ongoing even if they don’t report they are looking.”
So millions got used to the totally free ride system.
True story. A friend of mine was laid off last April from $500/week waitress job. I offered to hire her at $650/week for office clerk. State paid her $400/wk unemployment. Covid relief bumped that to $800/wk. She declined my offer and said she would rather do nothing. It paid better.
Eternal truth
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
True story. A friend of mine was laid off last April from $500/week waitress job. I offered to hire her at $650/week for office clerk. State paid her $400/wk unemployment. Covid relief bumped that to $800/wk. She declined my offer and said she would rather do nothing. It paid better.
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True in my case. Made $2500 a week pre-covid lockdown and layoff
Get $918 a week in Unemployment Benefits.
Do you think I will work a brutal manual labor job for even half that? A mere $492.80 a week? Hell no.
And as long as the US government and businesses prefer H1B Indian scumbags instead of Americans, I’m be content with the $918 UI benefits a week until September.
BTW, foreign income earned inside the US doesn’t have to be reported as income. No SSN, no W2 or no 1099 form. It’s basically untraceable and no where the report it in the various state UI portals.
That would be all the South American single mothers with kids now crossing the border and those who will follow once Africa kicks in
with all the welfare RATS we have we should be living in the cleanest most well kept country in they world! they can cut the grass with scissors and pick up leaves one at a time if they have to, but...
other than that, STARVE - NOT ONE DIME!!!
No Pity For The LAZY!!!
Hate to break it to you, but those are generally people in poor red states. Avg income is now 59,000 in red states with many under the pay no income tax threshold. We know many red states get back 2x what they send to the fed.
So... maybe let the rich blue staters foot the bills
Perfect time to bring in millions of illegal aliens and put them on welfare.
other than that, STARVE - NOT ONE DIME!!!
No Pity For The LAZY!!!
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So being forced out of 30-year career by the Cheap Indian Labor Express, I should start back at the bottom while being in my mid-50s working in a brutal part-time minimum wage manual labor job?
Hate to break it to you, but those are the only jobs willing to overlook decades of experience while hiring.
What pure laziness is: most American companies and corporations preferring Cheap Indian and Mexican Labor.
you know damn well what i’m talking about, people who game the system, not people who found themselves out of a job due to no fault of their own
if a person is on a full welfare ride at taxpayers expense, i see no reason why asking for labor in return is considered unreasonable as in all cash for no work crowd says
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