F.A.S.T. Old CATO Study Says Welfare More Lucrative Than Work. Not Exactly True

Facts Are Stupid Things  9.3.15

I’m not a big Facebook guy. I understand it’s importance to comics and artists when it comes to letting folks know you’re working. I also understand some people just like to announce what they are having for dinner. One thing I know for sure is that Facebook is a horrible place to argue politics.

Case in point: A 1995 study updated in 2013, done at the always biased CATO Institute, which I saw posted today as if it were new news. That study purports to prove that welfare is a better gig than working in more than 30 of our united states.  I immediately got the whiff of suspicion and found a more sobering piece that describes the ways CATO took every possible welfare program and in theory assigned maximum income to all recipients.  In reality, according to this piece by Josh Barro at Business Insider, they didn’t allow for the fact that benefiting from one or several of the programs excludes recipients from benefiting from all the rest.

In short, CATO took liberty with their assumptions and then posted a finding they were looking for.  In so doing, they also helped to keep the public mis-informed in perpetuity and forever.

There’s A New Study That Says Welfare Pays Better Than Work — Here’s Why It’s Total Nonsense

Anecdotally, There are plenty of examples to be found of people abusing the system. But in the aggregate, for the vast majority, welfare is never a better gig than a good job.

As an aside: I think Donald Trump should help by using some of his billions to open a factory in Queens where he can get Americans off of welfare and back to work sewing his Donald J. Trump Collection of shirts and ties. These ties are great. They are fantastic. People are gonna love my ties.

And just because I’m old fashioned and believe in double sourcing as much as possible, here is a second blog I found written by Mike Dunford, who I do not know, but who seems to have done his homework.

No, Cato, Welfare Doesn’t Pay More Than Minimum Wage

Dunford concludes: “Cato’s statement that, “The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work,” is not just a lie in general, it’s a lie in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia.”

And here is the original 1995 masterpiece from CATO Institute:

Welfare Pays Better than Work,

http://www.cato.org/policy-report/novemberdecember-1995/welfare-pays-better-work