91–100 of 487 posts
How many non-Amazon warehouse worked are on food stamps or Medicaid? Without that comparison this title is just flame bait.
If workers need government aid to make basic ends meet, it is the employer, not the employee, that is on welfare, subsidized by taxpayers and government borrowing.
That is not correct - a person with no skills who has 10 kids will never be able to support themselves via a job. It is welfare for them.
This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would other…
>The government subsidizes corporate low wage work But importantly only the lowest of the low wages There is a huge swath of workers that can't get benefits like food stamps or medicaid because they don't qualify via the means testing formula and they can't really afford to live where they live, afford medical insurance etc. Its those folks that have it the worst, IMO. Cost of living keeps you from building any wealt…
Intuitively, I'd expect fraud to go up (at least to some degree) as means testing goes down like a differential equation. The depressing part of this is that it doesn't matter what is actually true, or what either of us are convinced is true, as the system will do its own thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need to apply marginal thinking here. They are better off with welfare benefits, which means it's a good thing that they have them. If you gave them more benefits, they would have more negotiating power and be able to become even more employed[0], and then would you complain more? [0] assuming that's what they want to do
Giving benefits to employees, instead of forcing the company to pay a living wage, is effectively a subsidy for corporate profits.
Instead of artificially raising the minimum wage we should put more funding into job training. Help those marginal workers build the skills they need to earn higher wages.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd be surprised, many people qualify for SNAP and may not realize it. It's based on income, and handled by the states, and the income limit climbs based on number of children. Some states you can get it if you're pregnant no matter what . (It can often be a strategic thing to get if you can, because large numbers of other programs that require applications will declare you automatically qualify if you get SNAP.) M…
I was amazed when an ex told me she was on food stamps as a part of the financial aid package for the Oregon university she was attending. Don't even believe she was an Oregon resident at the time (or ever), if you reside in a California county bordering a different state they let you attend university in the other state (or the other way around) without paying out-of-state tuition.
This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would other…
>The government subsidizes corporate low wage work But importantly only the lowest of the low wages There is a huge swath of workers that can't get benefits like food stamps or medicaid because they don't qualify via the means testing formula and they can't really afford to live where they live, afford medical insurance etc. Its those folks that have it the worst, IMO. Cost of living keeps you from building any wealt…
This is not informative. The correct comparison would be of the marginal cost of eligibility testing (both in terms of false positives and false negatives) vs the marginal cost of fraud. In other words, whether the current cost of means/asset testing is more than the current total fraud is irrelevant to the economic case for reducing or increasing funding for eligibility screening.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalists (large business owners) generally pay higher wages than the alternative, small/family business owners. Eg Walmart/Amazon have better benefits than an equivalent small business, unless you're the owner of that small business. But also, wages generally go up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N (This is "income", which is a superset of wages. I didn't link wages because those are confusing, ave…
> Capitalists (large business owners) You don't know what a capitalist is and that's on you. Regardless, benefits and job security are abysmal at small businesses so even if you were right, the aggregate effect is the same. Productivity goes up and wages don't. > But also, wages generally go up Just utter nonsense. Accounting for COL, wages more often remain stagnant in the US over the past 50 years.
Are you going to provide a definition? I think it's people who own and trade capital.
> Regardless, benefits and job security are abysmal at small businesses so even if you were right
You're agreeing with me and then doing "even if you were right"? Also, this is pretty much out of Marx - capitalism was better for workers than the preceding stage. Small businesses are the preceding stage.
> Accounting for COL, wages more often remain stagnant in the US over the past 50 years.
You said wages don't go up, which means nominal wages don't go up.
If you wanted to say real wages don't go up that's a different question. And it's true because our response to the 2008 recession was bad. But not our response to the 2020 one! They're way up now! It's great.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010
Note, it's difficult for them to go too far up because of "wage-price spirals", and also generally because voters hate it when prices go up.
If workers need government aid to make basic ends meet, it is the employer, not the employee, that is on welfare, subsidized by taxpayers and government borrowing.
That is not correct - a person with no skills who has 10 kids will never be able to support themselves via a job. It is welfare for them.
I think it is better to see it as the government's responsibility to take care of it citizens. Medicaid, food stamps, and the negative income tax represents this approach. We don't necessarily see it as a bad thing that the government takes care of citizens. If someone is struggling, it is the governments role to step in and support that person.
But it does make sense to talk about whether these programs provide sufficient support, or if our approach to taxation, which supports these programs, is fair.