Your Opinion: Inadequate incentives to leave welfare

Dear Editor:

If someone offered to pay you an amount equal to what your job pays, if you quit your job, would you stay home?

The CATO Institute, which is described by Wikipedia as "an American libertarian think tank" recently published a paper revealing how much a woman with two kids, and no male who provides any support, could qualify for in welfare benefits. In 35 states welfare benefits pay better than minimum wage jobs. There are 126 separate federal programs ready that hand out money?

In 13 states this woman would have to take a job making more than $15/hour to equal the welfare benefits she could collect. The study clearly states that there is no evidence that people on welfare are "lazy." There is also no evidence that they are "stupid." If you pay people more to stay on welfare, why would they take a job?  

The federal government spends $668.2 billion a year on welfare and states add another $284 billion. There are around 46 million people in the US whose income is below the poverty level. Government is spending over $20,000 per person for those who are in poverty; or $60,000/yr for the woman with two kids. Whose pockets are being lined with all this money. Obviously a lot of it is not finding its way to the welfare recipients. Perhaps this is the government trickle-down economics. The money from the feds starts out as a flood but by the time all the bureaucrats get done taking their cut it becomes only a trickle. For those who wonder, a woman with two children in Missouri would have to make $10.96 per hour to make as much as she might collect on welfare. In Missouri the annual amount has increased by about 17 percent, after adjusting for inflation, since 1995. 

I am not saying that most of those in need are receiving too much, but government programs are not providing adequate incentives to get off, or never get on, welfare. The federal government has spent trillions of dollars since Johnson started the failed "War on Poverty" the late "60s. Today the percentage of Americans living below the poverty level is the same as it was in the mid-"60s.