Working, but Needing Public Assistance Anyway

[KamaAina]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/business/economy/working-but-needing-public-assistance-anyway.html

A home health care worker in Durham, N.C.; a McDonald’s cashier in Chicago; a bank teller in New York; an adjunct professor in Maywood, Ill. They are all evidence of an improving economy, because they are working and not among the steadily declining ranks of the unemployed.

Yet these same people also are on public assistance — relying on food stamps, Medicaid or other stretches of the safety net to help cover basic expenses when their paychecks come up short.

And they are not alone. Nearly three-quarters of the people helped by programs geared to the poor are members of a family headed by a worker, according to a new study by the Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California. As a result, taxpayers are providing not only support to the poor but also, in effect, a huge subsidy for employers of low-wage workers, from giants like McDonald’s and Walmart to mom-and-pop businesses....

Taxpayers pick up the difference, he said, between what employers pay and what is required to cover what most Americans consider essential living costs.

[Arugula Latte]

1. It's okay. Some rich MFer can park his boat inside his yacht, so all is good.

[gollygee]

2. Yeah but we need to focus on the REAL issues!

Like what kinds of groceries they're buying with their food stamps.

/sarcasm