The question we should be asking isn't "how can we make low skill workers work for less money?". That is a race to the bottom that results in bigger societal problems and overall, bigger societal costs as those dispossessed people who are expected to work longer hours for less money than they can survive on realise that its easier and more profitable (and therefore more economically rational) to mug people in their homes, strip copper from empty houses and bridges and generally turn to crime.

Second of all, if you want high skilled workers to subsidize the unskilled, it's not necessary to disincentivize work. You could instead use guaranteed jobs - replace unemployment/welfare/etc with a job picking up trash by the roadside, cleaning the DMV, beautifying public spaces, etc. This is what FDR did.

Thus, low skill workers would no longer be faced with the choice of TV or flipping burgers. It would instead be DMV bathrooms vs flipping burgers.

To create even further incentive for work, you could stigmatize those with the guaranteed jobs. Instead of paying money, you could pay with in-kind benefits: rooms in a dormitory instead of housing vouchers, standardized cheapo clothing instead of money to purchase Modern Couture, cafeteria meals instead of McD's. Thus, even if your material standard of living doesn't go up from getting a job, your status does.

So, at your bare bottom essentials, you're looking at 260 a month, and hope you don't break an arm or have a life-threatening injury, because that's more money than you may make in a year.

That means, at a minimum, you would need to make ~3200 to survive. That assumes no crisis ever. And most importantly, that assumes no children. After all, you have no extra money for condoms or other birth control, and if you're raped, you have no money for an abortion.

And that's to live three to a studio eating a step above gruel. 3200 goes a heck of a lot further in India. We just can't compete.

But what we forget is that welfare isn't for the mother -- it's for the child. It's to make sure we don't have kids begging in the street rather than going to school, that we don't have emaciated children nutrient-deficient, lowering their IQs by nutrition -- no fault of their own. The question becomes, how do you make sure we establish a baseline for children so that those who have the ability to rise out even have a chance?

Under my proposal, there are no starving children. At most, their parents have a lower social status because they live in government issued dormitories and wear government issue grey sweatsuits. This gives the parents a social incentive to get a job with no deprivation.

As for my comparison to India, adjusted for purchasing power, the top 5% of India are poorer than the bottom 5% in the US. This accords very well with my anecdotal observations. I have far more sympathy for the Indian professional working 8-10 hours/day + 2-3 hours commute (who still can't afford AC or a car, unlike the poor American) than I do for a poor American sitting on the couch watching Jerry Springer.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...

I like the idea of infrastructure help for welfare, but what do we do with the 3 year old left alone at night so that mom can do janitorial work?

4 moms do janitorial work, 1 does day care work.

I totally agree with the idea that instead of just giving money we should give them work. Personally I would farm out most government jobs to the unemployed. Many of those jobs that have a fixed employee are low skilled themselves and could be done by someone looking for work with just a couple of training courses, if that.

However, I would pay them real money. I hate this idea of stigmatizing the jobs. If they're happy staying in these jobs, we always need something done. The problem with your idea is that once a person ended up in these "stigmatized" jobs, they could never get out. They can't go to an interview for a nice job in "standardized cheapo clothing". The class stigmatization will ensure that once in, one can never leave this class.

It's called the workhouse. The Victorians tried it. Read Dickens for example.

Do you have an objection to what I actually proposed, rather than some straw man from 150 years ago?

Are you suggesting people raise their families in dormitories ? It's one thing for students or a military barracks (which are for unmarried soldiers anyway). It's quite another for people wishing to bring up a family in privacy and dignity.

Incidentally, apart from the fact that the parents would have lower status, how is raising a child in a dormitory (shared with the parent) different from raising a child in a home paid for with vouchers?

People need a purpose. Something to do. That's a big part of what work is -- and our society provides all sorts of incentives that take those opportunities away and destroy the communities (as in people communities) that people with less means once depended on. In the process, we make alot of other people rich.

Crime like what you describe is evidence of desperation -- people are able to strip copper out of buildings because none of the neighbors give a shit, and the local government's policies make it viable for speculators to keep buildings vacant.

Read "The Death and Life of American Cities". Poverty doesn't need to equal misery, and being provided with stuff doesn't equate to happiness. We forgot about that after World War 2.

with no minimum wage limit, what is to stop pay dropping below the 'viable life' line, however you personally define it?

"People need a purpose. Something to do."

They also need money: to eat, to live, to feed their dependents, to transport themselves (to work!), to educate themselves, to clothe themselves and to warm themselves in winter. To medicate themselves. To participate in life.

"Crime like what you describe is evidence of desperation -- people are able to strip copper out of buildings because none of the neighbors give a shit, and the local government's policies make it viable for speculators to keep buildings vacant."

That may be why people get away with it. but people perform those acts out of desperation. because they need money to do all the above.

"Read "The Death and Life of American Cities". Poverty doesn't need to equal misery, and being provided with stuff doesn't equate to happiness. We forgot about that after World War 2."

Im not talking about buying them televisions. Im talking about being able to afford to take your daughter to the doctor, to buy yourself a book for school.

If you can so easily brush off the sodding huge downsides of poverty, I am going to go out on a limb and claim that you have never experienced it in its real form.

Poverty is brutal. It makes people hard, it makes people stupid and it makes them desperate.

I'm not white-washing and pretending that being poor is fun. But the combination of US economic, social and criminal policies in the United States has created great injustices that have destroyed millions of lives. 1 in 3 black men will find themselves incarcerated during their lives. (http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/14873_Chapter9.pdf) That statistic is a national disgrace.

oh? what other supplements, exactly? more minimum wage jobs? how many supplements do you expect me to utilize?

"The actual minimum wage required to support a small family without external assistance is probably more like $15-18/hour."

how do you define 'support'? do you mean to educate, clothe, provide warmth and food. Do you just mean food? food and housing? food 4 days a week, and housing 5 days a week? are both parents working? who is looking after the kids? just one parent? so they are supporting how many people?

"1 in 3 black men will find themselves incarcerated during their lives. "

Indeed. lets see whether we can find a solution to that which doesn't require lowering the minimum wage.

This cohort doesn't appear to be very poor at all, in fact -- they report negative self-employment income. I wonder if you've confused low income with poverty. Or perhaps i'm confused, and haven't grasped your argument.

[0] I'm taking welfare to be the sum of "Unemployment and workers' compensation, veterans' benefits" and "Public assistance, supplemental security income, food stamps".

As for my confusion, I'm only looking at people near or below the US poverty line. Business owners who take a loss are defined by the government as living in poverty. You might argue that the government overstates poverty, and I would agree with you.

As for the sources of income section, it is clearly incomplete. If it weren't, consumption would be equal to income + change in net worth.

The poverty line sets a minimum level of consumption. These people are consuming above that threshold, so i don't think the government counts them as poor.

> If it weren't, consumption would be equal to income + change in net worth.

You're forgetting change in asset prices. If i own a house, and consume all my income, my net worth can still change if the price of the house changes.

Poverty is defined by income, not consumption. Please go read the link I provided explaining how the census calculates poverty.

You're forgetting change in asset prices.

Unless you are proposing that most poor people are homeowners, and that the value of their houses increased in 2009, that explanation doesn't carry much weight.

Fun fact: only cash transfers are counted as income. A housing voucher, for example, pays for consumption, but does not count as income.

yummyfajitas, are you somehow unaware that there are millions of people who desperately want to work, but can't find jobs? And that they would happily say goodbye to unemployment benefits in order to get back into a job?

Or do you simply not believe them?

Also, are you somehow unaware that there are millions of people who illegally enter the US in order to do jobs that Americans are unwilling to do? One would think that if millions of people desperately wanted to work, that demand for illegal immigrant labor should be drying up.

But could you please clarify where the jobless person gets $22k per year for leisurely consumption?

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/measur...

Withdrawals from a 401k and SS count as income, so if that homeowner is a retiree they might not be poor.

When I originally read "the poor do not want to work," I mistakenly (and hastily) interpreted this as a criticism of the so-called underclass or working poor (decent folks who are honest and hard-working but who are broke after life throws them a curve ball like unemployment or health problems).

Of course that's not who you mean. In my mind, I think your definition fits the "technically poor," not the socially and economically marginalized.

The technically poor would be those with substantial assets like a paid-off condo or house, with a six-figure 401k, good credit and family with substantial means, who suddenly become unemployed and so meet the income criteria, if only temporarily. Some of these people are low-skilled, and some are high-skilled.

For those folks, it certainly could be rational (if demoralizing) to stay on unemployment, because their real safety net is tapping into their assets at some point, e.g. when their benefits run out.

In my limited experience, the "working poor" are very demoralized by government assistance, accepting it as a last resort, and they tend to want to get back into a job for reasons of pride and ego.

The people who are morally corrupt and willing to exploit the system have absolutely nothing to do with poverty. They exist at every income bracket, and I've met plenty of middle class and high net worth individuals who would qualify :)

I apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusions and for my initially antagonistic tone. I regret the error and will not repeat it.

Collecting garbage is a job that cannot be outsourced, but doing mundane paperwork can and is.

To paraphrase a republican, if the minimum wage was abolished, everyone would have jobs.