Welfare is not a subsidy to minimum-wage employers.
Walmart and McDonalds are in the news every week as examples of greedy corporations that force their employees to collect welfare and food stamps in order to avoid starving to death in their Section 8 homes. This is a convenient conclusion if one wants to raise minimum wage, but it is false at its core.
Taxpayers are justified in blaming somebody for costing them billions in government-provided benefits, but that blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the recipients of those benefits. Corporations that hire low-skilled workers deserve our thanks for helping people become productive members of society.
Some Walmart employees collect government-provided benefits.
Before we can blame Walmart for paying too little, we should understand who qualifies for means-tested benefits even while working. By using the base wage of $7.25 per hour ($1,208 per month), the Washing State Social and Health Services qualification form produces these results. According to their website, people who are earning minimum wage qualify for no benefits and the reason cited in each case is "No children."
The result is repeated if two adults are living in a household supported by just one minimum-wage job. Only employees with children qualify for welfare while earning minimum wage.
| Program Name | Might You Be Eligible? |
Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Temporary Assistance to Needy Families | You MAY NOT be eligible because: | No children. |
| Basic Food Program | You MAY be eligible. Calculate your benefit and how to apply. | |
| Working Connections Child Care | You MAY NOT be eligible because: | No children. |
| Medical Assistance (Medicaid) | You MAY be eligible. How to apply. | |
| Apple Health for Kids | You MAY NOT be eligible because: | No children. |
| Childrens Medicaid | You MAY NOT be eligible because: | No children. |
| Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program | You MAY NOT be eligible because: | No children. Too much income. There are exceptions for special needs and TANF clients. |
| Headstart | You MAY NOT be eligible because: | No children. |
| WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) 1-800-322-2588 |
You MAY NOT be eligible because: | No children. |
| WTAP (Washington Telephone Assistance Program) | You MAY be eligible, if you get other DSHS services. How to apply. | |
| Child Support Services | You MAY be eligible, if any of your children do not reside with one or both parents. How to apply. |
Parents are no longer held responsible for supporting their families.
In the past, it was assumed that supporting a family was the responsibility of the parents. When times were tough, a father would ask for overtime or find a second job. Sometimes mom would find a way to make ends meet by finding a job that allowed her to work while the children were in school.
Minimum wage was never meant to support an entire family, much less keep an entire family above the poverty line. Couples waited to start a family until after they had finished school. They saved enough to buy a home so that they could provide a comfortable lifestyle to their children.
Many young people do not understand that supporting a family is expensive. Not only is there more food to buy, but housing costs increase along with incidentals like utilities and entertainment.
Liberal politicians are trying to create a new paradigm wherein employers are responsible for paying every low-skilled worker enough money to support an entire family. This is an unrealistic proposition at best and an attempt to buy votes at worst.
Obama claims that, "Americans overwhelmingly agree that no one who works full time should ever have to raise a family in poverty." While the statement is mostly true, the poverty-preventing mechanism most Americans tend to agree on is waiting to start a family until one can afford to raise a family.
Blame deadbeat dads for poor single mothers, not employers.
Another shift away from traditional values is the new Liberal concept that unmarried parents are no longer obligated to pay child support to the parents who care for their children. Highlighted in the news every week is a new single mom whose greedy corporate employer refuses to pay her enough to support her children.
In the Summer of 2013, employees of fast food restaurants held protests demanding that their pay be doubled to $15. Letitia James, a City Councilwoman in New York, supported those protests by claiming that single parents are the typical employee of fast food restaurants and even went as far as to claim that New York was "witnessing the feminization of poverty".
We should be thanking employers for hiring single moms; they have inflexible hours and tend to need more time off to care for their families. Blaming the employer of a single mom for forcing her onto welfare is ridiculous.
Place the blame squarely where it belongs.
No employer of low-skill workers is responsible for those employees who collect welfare. Millions of single employees live comfortably on the income from minimum-wage jobs and millions of parents support their families on a single income without government aid.
Employees who need welfare to support their families are to blame for needing welfare to support their families. Parents are not collecting welfare because the employer is paying too little, but because they do not earn enough at their jobs--jobs that they freely accepted--to fulfill their own responsibilities--responsibilities that they freely accepted.
Minimum wage jobs are not meant to be careers.
That minimum wage jobs are not meant to be careers obvious enough when one considers that only 2.6% of American workers are paid minimum wage. These jobs are for teenagers with few financial responsibilities and for people looking to earn a few extra dollars with a second job.
Using these statistics from the US Department of Labor, we can see that about one in forty Americans is working a minimum-wage job. Projected over a 45-year career, that amounts to little more than one year for the average American worker. After that first year, almost all Americans have moved on to higher-paying jobs.
The new Liberal paradigm portrays employers as having a cradle-to-grave obligation to support low-skill workers with enough pay to support a family so long as they never quit. That paradigm is unsustainable and unrealistic.
When did we become a nation where people expect to do the same entry-level job long enough to raise three kids? In New York? Shanita Simon, mother of three and shift supervisor at Kentucky Fried Chicken, expects that same entry-level job to pay her enough to put three kids through through college.
Simon admits halfway through the film below that she can escape poverty, but deliberately works very few hours in order to remain poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. If her employer doubles her salary then the very likely outcome is that she will continue to self-regulate her hours back down to the point that she will be back in self-imposed poverty and her employer will get half as many hours of labor for the same money.
