Peppered with sad tales like that of Isabel Bermudex who went from a poor upbringing to earning $180,000 in one year as a real estate agent during the boom before falling back to nothing, the article is intended to tug at the heart strings. It emphasizes the desperate straights of these unemployed and incomeless folks and how badly they want an honest day's work.
Throughout the article, people talk about wanting - but not being able to find - jobs and the terrible situation they'd be in without government handouts.
We certainly don't doubt it.
What we do doubt is that the solution is more handouts; more government. Government interference is the problem - it is what prevents most people from finding gainful employment. We have a huge excess supply of labor that allegedly wants nothing more than employment (10% unemployed). Any income is better than no income, all else being equal. However, our strict minimum wage legislation prevents the natural market clearing mechanism from taking place. As any freshman econ major can tell you, virtually any amount of supply of goods or services that has positive value can be cleared at the right price. Further, because we pay people not to work when they lose their jobs, the hurdle for accepting new work is artificially raised by the government subsidy the individuals receive.
The minimum wage and welfare-type programs are painful legacies of the New Deal era that oontinue to wreak havoc today. The people in the article below continue to suffer from F.D. Roosevelt's mad science. TILB used to think the minimum wage level didn't particularly matter because during the long period of full employment it really didn't. However, during periods of economic downturn, minimum wage basically puts a chokehold on remployment - not allowing labor prices to reset and preventing companies from hiring.
In reality, the minimum wage and other cost raising government interferences like it are nothing but Chinese economic stimulus legislation.
As our policies make it impossibly uneconomic for Americans to be employed in America by American companies, the government is basically encouraging those same companies to send wages and much needed investment capital overseas to countries that have more friendly policies toward their populous - policies that don't legally prevent citizens from working for a wage they'd happily accept and worse, that pay people not to work!
Only a government official or tunnel visioned theoretical academician could come up with this foolishness. Sadly, we seem to have returned to this sort of thinking at our highest levels. It virtually guarantees that our country will struggle to reach a full recovery.
Sometimes we wonder if that underperformance and increase of government supplicants isn't actually the goal of the left; to enslave the underemployed and undereducated to resources provided by their friendly congressman.
Intentional or not, that is the outcome of these thoughtless laws.
Article excerpts below.
January 3, 2010
The Safety Net
Living on Nothing but Food Stamps
By JASON DEPARLE and ROBERT M. GEBELOFF
CAPE CORAL, Fla. — After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic housing bust — the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the investment property.
Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for rejection, she is supporting two daughters on an income that inspires a double take: zero dollars in monthly cash and a few hundred dollars in food stamps.
With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, Ms. Bermudez belongs to an overlooked subgroup that is growing especially fast: recipients with no cash income.
About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.
Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card.
“It’s the one thing I can count on every month — I know the children are going to have food,” Ms. Bermudez, 42, said with the forced good cheer she mastered selling rows of new stucco homes.
Members of this straitened group range from displaced strivers like Ms. Bermudez to weathered men who sleep in shelters and barter cigarettes. Some draw on savings or sporadic under-the-table jobs. Some move in with relatives. Some get noncash help, like subsidized apartments. While some go without cash incomes only briefly before securing jobs or aid, others rely on food stamps alone for many months.
...
A skinny fellow in saggy clothes who spent his childhood in foster care, Rex Britton, 22, hopped a bus from Syracuse two years ago for a job painting parking lots. Now, with unemployment at nearly 14 percent and paving work scarce, he receives $200 a month in food stamps and stays with a girlfriend who survives on a rent subsidy and a government check to help her care for her disabled toddler.
“Without food stamps we’d probably be starving,” Mr. Britton said.
A strapping man who once made a living throwing fastballs, William Trapani, 53, left his dreams on the minor league mound and his front teeth in prison, where he spent nine years for selling cocaine. Now he sleeps at a rescue mission, repairs bicycles for small change, and counts $200 in food stamps as his only secure support.
“I’ve been out looking for work every day — there’s absolutely nothing,” he said.
A grandmother whose voice mail message urges callers to “have a blessed good day,” Wanda Debnam, 53, once drove 18-wheelers and dreamed of selling real estate. But she lost her job at Starbucks this year and moved in with her son in nearby Lehigh Acres. Now she sleeps with her 8-year-old granddaughter under a poster of the Jonas Brothers and uses her food stamps to avoid her daughter-in-law’s cooking.
“I’m climbing the walls,” Ms. Debnam said.
...
But others say the lack of cash support shows the safety net is torn. The main cash welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, has scarcely expanded during the recession; the rolls are still down about 75 percent from their 1990s peak. A different program, unemployment insurance, has rapidly grown, but still omits nearly half the unemployed. Food stamps, easier to get, have become the safety net of last resort.
“The food-stamp program is being asked to do too much,” said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington advocacy group. “People need income support.”
...
The expansion of the food-stamp program, which will spend more than $60 billion this year, has so far enjoyed bipartisan support. But it does have conservative critics who worry about the costs and the rise in dependency.
“This is craziness,” said Representative John Linder, a Georgia Republican who is the ranking minority member of a House panel on welfare policy. “We’re at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government.”
Mr. Linder added: “You don’t improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work. You improve the economy by lowering taxes” so small businesses will create more jobs.
...
Kevin Zirulo and Diane Marshall, brother and sister, have more unlikely stories than a reality television show. With a third sibling paying their rent, they are living on a food-stamp benefit of $300 a month. A gun collector covered in patriotic tattoos, Mr. Zirulo, 31, has sold off two semiautomatic rifles and a revolver. Ms. Marshall, who has a 7-year-old daughter, scavenges discarded furniture to sell on the Internet.
They said they dropped out of community college and diverted student aid to household expenses. They received $150 from the Nielsen Company, which monitors their television. They grew so desperate this month, they put the breeding services of the family Chihuahua up for bid on Craigslist.
“We look at each other all the time and say we don’t know how we get through,” Ms. Marshall said.
...
Ms. Bermudez recently answered the door in her best business clothes and handed a reporter her résumé, which she distributes by the ream. It notes she was once a “million-dollar producer” and “deals well with the unexpected.”
“I went from making $180,000 to relying on food stamps,” she said. “Without that government program, I wouldn’t be able to feed my children.”
