I've written about the subject before, but here's Jimmie Bise reproducing and commenting on a table he got from Tyler Durden of Zerohedge, who in turn got it from The Cleveland Current, that shows the breakdown on a family of four bringing in $14,500 in wages, but on full federal benefits, having more real income than a family of four earning $60,000, in which case it would no longer qualify for benefits. If such a family were to double its wages, it would experience a total loss in real income of $14,400. Even quadrupling its wages would result in its being left $4000 poorer in terms of real annual income at the end of the day.
Here’s what this means. You are better off if you earn less money, if you work less hard, if you lean more on government money taken from the pockets of your friends and neighbors, than if you worked harder and made four times as much.
Let that soak in for a second, then digest this one more morsel: these numbers exclude SSI benefits given to those the government deems “disabled”. If you include that “benefit”, the number goes higher. Much higher.
Isn’t it time we ended this? The way I see it, we can do it in a reasonable and orderly fashion or it’ll all come crashing down around our ears. We get to choose.
I recommend that you go over there and get a look at the table.
What it also means is that if you're a sole wage earner who is earning $14,500 in wages, you'd be mad to ask for your salary to be doubled. Or if you're an employer, you'd be doing your employee a disservice to offer him such a raise, especially when, after all, government is extracting a good deal of your profits to turn around and bestow them on your employee and people like him.
In related news, immigrants are more likely both to start businesses up, and to be on the dole. I don't know whether the special incentives that existed in the eighties and nineties for immigrants to start businesses—such as five years of tax amnesty—still exist, and I'm not sure what the overlap might be, but it's plainly the Euro model that we've embarked on in this regard. As Jonah Goldberg notes, this goes hand-in-glove with the administration's policy to increase immigrant use of so-called social safety net programs through advertising entitlement to benefits . . . not only in the US, but in Mexico. So, as you watch your Border Wars reality show, keep in mind that this is what is meant by 'stimulus': welfare programs that promote illegal immigration, coupled with the amassing of more police on the border to interdict it—much as was the model with Fast and Furious—resulting in the growth of reciprocal federal institutions. And news came down today as well that the DoJ is taking AZ Governor Brewer to court over refusing drivers licences to illegal immigrants.
Meanwhile, even as the 'fiscal cliff' approaches and the education bubble begins to burst, at Purdue the past decade has seen a 54% rise in the number of salaries paid out by colleges and institutions to administrative faculty, who overwhelmingly support liberal policies and politicians, who in turn have licensed them to feed the beast while contributing little to what used to be regarded as the core functions of such institutions except as regards feeding the doleful dragon of diversity-so-called and justifying ever higher tuition and fees.
Obviously, such administrators are entitled to their positions, which involve the administration of the Arcane But Essential Practice of Progressive Virtues, and the Washington Post is aghast that Obama has refused in all ways to try to grapple with entitlement reform, despite his pledges. In related news, I have some obamassory notes that I am looking to unload at a mere 5% of their face value, should anyone know anyone who might be interested.
