Welfare Is Totes Okay for Businesses (Necessary, Even)

When I first read this article about how cutting government services, in this case cutting bus schedules, hurts both the poor and businesses, my initial reaction was, as a bus rider myself, "it never ends". There's no end to the abuse the poor endure, there's no end to the calls to reduce the services the poor rely upon, there's no end to the poverty itself.

Waiting for the bus this morning, something else about the article hit me.

Across Milwaukee County, workers want jobs, and businesses want workers. Eric Isbister is the chief executive of GenMet, a metal fabricator located one block north of Milwaukee county. He needs new employees -- the expansion of his business depends on it -- but he can't get them.

The nearest bus stop is more than two miles from his factory. He advertises in newspapers, and regularly interviews prospective employees, but he continually runs up against the same problem. Often, he said, he'll see an interviewee's friends or family waiting in a car outside, ready to give the person a ride home. When he sees that, he knows he won't be able to hire the worker.

Isbister said he'd hire a dozen new employees on the spot, if only he could.

"I would welcome them with open arms," he said. "And we can train. We're well known for being the place that trains. You don't have to be a metal fabricator, you don't have to be a welder. We can teach you.

"But you have to be able to drive."

My immediate reaction to that is, gee, it's funny how affecting one portion of society affects another. It took several days for me to realize something else.

But you have to be able to drive. That's an odd way of putting it, isn't it? Why would you need to be able to drive to be a metal fabricator or a welder? What Mr. Isbister means to say isn't that you need to be able to drive, it's that you have to be able to afford a car.

Where I live, bus riders are divided fairly evenly between three groups: people too young to drive, people too old to drive and people too poor to drive. Mr. Isbister isn't talking about the first two groups, he's talking about the third group, and all of those people are fully able to drive. I have a driver's license. I know how to drive a car. I just can't afford to own, maintain, repair and gas a car. That's expensive and I just don't get paid enough.

Neither, I would guess, do Mr. Isbister's employees. And that's the problem. Henry Ford was a racist asshat, but he did get one thing right: he paid his employees enough to afford the product they were producing. He was only doing that to create a demand for his product (can you imagine a time when you had to create a demand for cars?), but the point still stands.

In order for businesses to be able to pay low wages, they depend upon our tax dollars to provide services to their employees that their paychecks just won't cover. Low wages won't cover the cost of owning a car, so your tax dollars pay for public transportation to get employees to work. Low wages won't cover the cost of food, so your tax dollars pay for food stamps and WIC*. Low wages won't cover the cost of housing, so your tax dollars pay for housing assistance*. Low wage and part time jobs don't cover, or even offer, health insurance, so your tax dollars pay for health insurance for their children. And on and on and on.

Nobody says a word about this. They just rip away more and more assistance from the truly desperate and stand about in confusion as the economy crumbles. Welfare for businesses is never called such, but without it, they can't even exist. But, hey, boot straps and self made men and all that, right?

*Yes, contrary to GOP talking points, many people receiving such assistance are working.

Making an Ass Out of U and Me

My mother always remembers how to spell "assume" with the sentence "when you do this, you make an ass out of u and me." (Actually, my mother thinks "assume" is spelled "assyoume" because of this phrase, but that's beside the point.)

I had a ridiculous run in on the bus and decided to share it with you. It fits in with yesterday's discussion of the joys of poverty quite well. Medically, I probably could drive, though I couldn't due to seizures for a while, but mostly I take the bus because I simply cannot afford a car. I have a hard enough time with $2.50 a day, 5 days a week. If you've ridden the bus outside of NYC* you know that most people who ride the bus are quite poor. The bus is literally their only option aside from walking or not going someplace. Outside of NYC, bus routes and schedules tend to be inconvenient and poorly planned, and riding the bus involves a lot of hurry up and wait. (For example, I'm writing this at 8:15. I'm at work 45 minutes early because the next bus would get me here 15 minutes late.)

In other words, nobody in my neck of the woods is riding the bus for pleasure. We're all poor. (Or high school students. They are comatose on the way in, and I avoid the 3:00 bus as if it were dipped in ebola.)

Anyway, a wonderful friend of mine gave me her old Kindle recently, loaded with great books, (you are the best!) and I've been passing my time on the bus reading it. No regular on the bus has blinked an eye, in fact, two women I talk to asked if my birthday had just passed. (Poor people understand that rich items are often the result of birthdays.)

Until this morning, when a well dressed woman I have never seen before started bitching that they weren't raising the bus rates when clearly people who ride the bus can afford it, looking pointedly at my Kindle. (Raising the bus rates is always a contentious issue at election time where I live.)

Look, poor people often have wealthier friends or relatives. Wealthier friends and relatives who understand that a touch of luxury, whether it be a Kindle or an ipod or an expensive coat, is often more appreciated than a paid bill. Luxury is a lovely thing when one is grinding away in poverty, wearing a winter coat indoors instead of turning on the heat, and skipping lunch so the electric bill gets paid. Hey, life sucks, but this Kindle is awesome!

And I don't have to explain to anyone where my Kindle came from. I did, in the most contemptuous tone of voice I can manage** and it didn't do a lick of good. She segued straight into welfare queens, of course. On a bus. Filled with actual welfare recipients and their children.

Good morning to me!

*Public transportation is a whole 'nother thing in NYC.

**I sound like a 6-year-old with a cold. It makes both sexy and contemptuous rather difficult to convey.

pic link

Perhaps Someone Needs a Dictionary

I will start this dissection with a few facts. (If you've never seen those before, they're these things that you can totally lie about, but lying about them doesn't actually make them go away.)

Income limits to receive food stamps in California:

1 person gross monthly income: $1,127 (yearly gross $13,524)

2 people gross monthly income: $1,517 (yearly gross $18,204

3 people gross monthly income: $1,907 (yearly gross $22,884)

4 people gross monthly income: $2,297 (yearly gross $27,564)

So, in order to qualify for food stamps, one person cannot make more than $13,524. That is not a lot of money. That is, in fact, $6.50 an hour at 40 hours a week- less than the federal minimum wage of $7.75. You could not, therefore, get food stamps if you were working full time, even at minimum wage.

Welfare payments are even worse.

The two largest welfare programs -- by far -- are Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and food stamps. In 1992, the average yearly AFDC family payment was $4,572, and food stamps for a family of three averaged $2,469, for a total of $7,041. (1) In that year, the poverty level for a mother with two children was $11,186. (2) Thus, these two programs paid only 63 percent of the poverty level, and 74 percent of a minimum wage job.

Yes, those numbers are old, but does anyone really think welfare payments have gone up significantly since 1992? I doubt it, too.

Why do I make this point? Because an awful lot of people seem to think being poor in America is just awesome. Poor people are rolling in it. Being poor in America is so much better than being wealthy and paying a higher nominal tax rate.

Yeah, making minimum wage and trying to pay rent and buy food- let alone pay for anything else, is just so fantastic, we should all do it. Yay!

There is a lot riding on the election results that are now just a few days away. Everyone has a lot to lose or perhaps gain from this election. Across America there are tens of thousands of businesses that are holding on by a thread. They are counting on a new course for our country being charted that will give them at minimum a slim chance to survive. And there are tens of millions of Americans that are out of work, and simply a nervous wreck not knowing if they will lose their jobs any day now. All have so much to lose.

But there is another group that has far more to lose than all the rest. They are the poor amongst us all. Most of them voted for Obama and most of the Democrats. For when you’re down and out you will warm to anyone that tells you what you want to hear. It is hard to listen to the truth when the truth hurts. It is easy to listen to a rant of propaganda blaming all your ills on others and a promise to punish others by taking some of what they have away from them and giving it to you. They give you what you need. Someone else to blame for all that you do not have. They also give you a reason to hate the very same people who they take from in order to provide for you.

Yes, the poor are like leeches on the deserving working folk- who are the new poor. (Don't get me started on how that happened, though I'm sure John Hutchison can blame that on the poor, too.)

So, how can we, the poor, stop the recession, lower unemployment and save the country we destroyed? Giving up our cell phones.

Might be a good idea to start reducing your discretionary spending. You know, cable TV, cell phones, video rentals, eating out, custom wheels and McDonalds! After all, you can’t have it your way for very much longer.

The dollar menu is too much for you anymore! It's a luxury. Start eating garbage, you worthless piece of shit. Custom wheels? Not on $13k a year. I think John Hutchison is confusing poor people for, well, rich people. Who else has custom "wheels", by which I assume he means cars. Or something. I'm not so hip as Mr. Hutchison. And video rentals! That's for rich folks! What are you thinking, renting a Dee-vee-dee for $1 from one of those red boxes? That's for people who aren't sucking the blood of the body politic, you parasite!

So if you’re on welfare and don’t want to lose your benefits than you need to start thinking about providing something back to the very people who have provided assistance to you all their working lives. All I am asking you to do is help us do what must be done to get America on track again.

Unemployment is 20% in some places. Where the fuck are these people supposed to find jobs to get themselves off of public assistance when there are 5 people vying for every 1 available job? Where the fuck are they supposed to get the skills to qualify for the jobs? Mr. Hutchison doesn't know- just do it! Stop being poor, it's easy!

I Think I'm Sad Now

poor, poverty, entitlements, welfare, food stamps,

I learned something yesterday. If you want some anonymous trolls to come by and shit all over your comments section, suggest systemic governmental help for the poor. Because nothing sets off a wingnut like the knowledge that poor children are eating on his dime.

I can post endlessly about the nonexistence of god and the lie that is religion and nobody bats an eyelash. Racism? Boooooring. Sexism? Who cares? Governmental help for poor children? HOW DARE YoU STEeL MAI MOnEEZ, YOU sELF RigTEOUs LIBERAl BITCH!!!!!1!!eleventy!!!! NAZIS WERE SOCIALISTS AND I WORK AT SOUP KITCHENS* AND IT'S MINE, MIIIIIIIIINE!!!ONE!!!!

Okay, shouty trolls, I know I should not speak directly to you unless I am wearing a garland of garlic and have doused myself in pinot grigio first, but seriously, you don't see anything wrong with the fact that you're this upset about your money being used to feed poor children? You never get done foaming at the mouth about baby feeding facists, accidentally catch a glimpse of your reflection in the TV and think, "Wow, where are my priorities? I'm totally okay with funding wars on brown people, but I'm this angry about poor children eating more or less nutritious meals paid for with a very small portion of my taxes**?"

Really? I mean, do you get equally foamy about the lips when you're driving down the streets and realize that you are driving on roads paid for with your taxes, and maybe you don't want to maintain those roads? Maybe you like offroading to work, and fuck those of us who don't. Do you risk seizures when you use your cell phone and realize that the FCC regulates the airwaves so that you aren't calling your wife on the same frequency the firefighters down the street are trying to use? Do you have heart attacks from sheer rage when you eat meat and don't succumb to e coli or salmonella because of USDA regulation?

Yeah, probably not.

So why does the thought of a poor child with a full belly make you so very, very angry?

Just askin'.

*I am officially invoking pics or it didn't happen.

**Entitlements, all of them, are about 2% of the federal budget. To put that in perspective, military spending is, according to the government, 20% of the budget.