No Welfare Abuse, Part 2 – Crunching The Numbers
By Matthew VanLandingham (12/22/03)
Last week, I wrote a column about “Janine,” a single mother of three children who receives a variety of non-cash public assistance handouts which augment her full-time, $7.00 per hour work earnings (see http://www.americandaily.com/item/3867).
To recap, Janine receives a $400 per month Section 8 housing subsidy, $300 per month in Medicaid insurance (including vision and dental), $300 per month in food stamps, and $600 per month for child care. She attends college on a full-tuition, low income grant, to the tune of $1100 per year, and receives an FIA allowance of $500 per year for repairs to her three-year-old automobile.
Reader responses to the article varied. One reader wrote, “This can't be true! This is appalling!” Another wrote, “How sad that you are so bitter about some single mom getting government assistance,” and asked, did I prefer to “starve [Janine] and her children? Make sure they have less than everyone else on the planet? Give them just enough assistance to make sure that their existence is miserable and not a dime more?”
Apparently this reader had not crunched the numbers.
Janine's government assistance, at a rough calculation, comes to about $1,735 per month, or $20,820 per year. This is not taxable income to Janine, so if a working person were to EARN that amount after state, federal and social security taxes, they would need to gross approximately $29,743 per year. This is the equivalent of working a 40 hour per week job, 52 weeks a year at $14.30 per hour. Add to this income the $7 per hour she makes at her full time job, and Janine earns the equivalent of $44,304 per year.
I know many families who take great pains and labor to earn half this much without any assistance whatsoever, and they are not "starving." In fact, they support not only themselves, but their tax dollars also fund the lifestyles of people like Janine. Janine, however, by virtue of choosing to bear children by men who take no responsibility for them, pockets the equivalent of a $30,000 per year paycheck, and the only “great pains” or “labor” required of her occur during childbirth. Her choices become the taxpayer's responsibility. I say the responsibility should fall more sturdily on her own shoulders.
Another reader concurs. She writes, “I have a college degree that has now put me in debt about as much as a year's salary. That was my choice. So was having 2 kids without being married. Does the general public have to pay for my choices, too? If so, I can tell you where to send the checks.”
Few would begrudge assistance to unfortunate families who are truly in need of a helping hand. However, our huge, sprawling social programs are poorly managed and require better oversight in order to prevent abuse and fraud. I contend that pointing out an example of this abuse, or reacting angrily to it, does not make one a heartless or bitter person.
The same reader who was saddened by my so-called bitterness and righteousness also wrote, “I do not know the story of Janine's life...but I can just about bet that she did not have many advantages growing up. I bet she did not have parents who cared and encouraged her to set goals. I doubt if she made the decisions she made in her life after getting a good upbringing that would give her skills she needed to make better decisions.”
Tragic. And ironic. It sounds eerily like a description of the children of a single mom who, as one reader put it, “ becomes a slave to public assistance and falls asleep in our social safety net.” What goals will her children learn from her? To procreate without regard to their ability to financially support children? What skills will they learn? How to milk the system? What kind of an example is she setting for the next generation of Americans? Will her children continue the vicious cycle of dependence? If so, will we excuse them because they “did not have many advantages,” or lacked two married parents who “cared and encouraged” them to set goals?
A wise man, who happens to be a close friend of mine, once said, “I don't know why people are surprised to discover that when you subsidize bad or irresponsible behavior, you get more and more of it.”
Another wise man, Walter E. Williams, syndicated columnist and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, writes, “We all have a moral obligation to pay our share for constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government, but we have no such obligation to have Congress take the earnings of one American and give them to another American. Forcing one American to serve the purposes of another is one way slavery can be defined.”
Perhaps I am bitter after all, at being a slave to the bad choices and irresponsible lifestyles of assistance addicts, and at the system that allows such abuse to continue unchecked.
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