Lies, Damn Lies, and Election Time Lies

[xoxoxoBruce]

There's yet another email making the rounds. It's pretty long but the gist is...

The Cato Institute released an updated 2013 study (original study in 1955) showing that welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job in 33 states and the District of Columbia. Even worse, welfare pays more than $15 per hour in 13 states. According to the study, welfare benefits have increased faster than minimum wage. It's now more profitable to sit at home than it is to earn an honest day's pay. Hawaii is the biggest offender, where welfare recipients earn $29.13 per hour, or a $60,590 yearly salary, all for doing nothing.

I know CATO is very hard right but this doesn't sound kosher. So I do a Google using, "welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job in 33 states and the District of Columbia." Hmm 152,000 hits, sounds promising. Most were right wing sites frothing about welfare queens and lazy niggers, but eventually I found a link to the CATO paper.
http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.or...ff_2013_wp.pdf

Minor point, the original was 1995, not 1955, but updated in 2013.
OK, so they start off saying right up front in the Executive Summary...

Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour. If Congress and state legislatures are serious about reducing welfare dependence and rewarding work, they should consider strengthening welfare work requirements, removing exemptions, and narrowing the definition of work.

Hard to misinterpret that statement, and enough to set the internet and email chattering, but I wonder how they determined that?

In reality, the federal government currently funds 126 separate programs targeted toward low-income people, 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits to individuals.

But nobody gets, or even knows about, all of them. OK, they admit that so they're taking what an "average welfare family" might get.

In particular, this study seeks to determine the approximate level of benefits that a typical welfare family, consisting of a single mother with two children, might receive, and to compare those benefits with the wages that a recipient would need to earn in order to take home an equivalent income.

From this they come up with welfare pays $29.13 per hour in Hawaii, down to $5.36 in Idaho. But this is only page 9 of 52, so I read on.
Methodology, hmm "typical family" gets calculated as getting Temporary Assistance for Needy Families(TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program(SNAP), Medicaid, Housing Assistance, Utilities Assistance, Women, Infants, and Children Program(WIC), and The Emergency Food Assistance Program(TEFAP).

I know for a fact there's a shitload on welfare that don't get housing assistance, and TANF is temporary but whatever, we're only up to page 31.
What's this, a "Prebuttal"?

Critics of Cato’s 1995 study pointed out,
correctly, that not all welfare recipients actually receive all the benefits to which they are entitled. That is particularly true of housing benefits, as we have discussed above. Similar arguments can be made regarding utilities assistance, WIC, and free commodities. Still, with the exception of housing in states with less than a 10 percent participation rate, we believe it is proper to include the full package of benefits in our calculations because at least some recipients in every state do receive them.

Some? As in 75%? 35%? 2%?

Still, since not every observer will agree with our approach, we offer Table 16, which shows the value of a welfare benefits package that includes only those benefits received by nearly all welfare recipients: TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid.

Oh, lets see what bench W... uh, table 16, says...
Now Alaska wins with an hourly equivalent of $10.55, then six states in the $8 range, two in the $7 range, nineteen in the $6 range and the rest in the $5 range with Mississippi at $5.12.

Now 85% of the email recipients just had their suspicions confirmed, and forwarded it to their personal usual suspects, without ever checking.

[Spexxvet]

Great post, Bruce

[orthodoc]

Hah. Once, I belonged to a political party. No more. But I always vote.