Federal Government Has Declared War On Work

From Investors.com:

While 50 years ago the federal government declared war on poverty, I would submit that in recent years it has led an undeclared but real new war:

a War on Work.

The government increasingly is using its coercive powers to punish people who want to work, creating a vast class of able-bodied Americans dependent on the government — and politicians — for their daily bread.

The statistics are startling. A smaller proportion of working-age Americans works today than when the recession officially ended 4-1/2 years ago (June 2009).

But this trend is not just a failure of policies to encourage economic recovery, such as the stimulus package and the ineffective, highly expansionary Federal Reserve monetary policy.

The decline in work has been going on since at least 2000, under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Suppose today we had the same proportion of Americans working that we did in 2000 — the end of the Clinton administration. We would have 14.6 million more workers in America — 4 million more than the number of unemployed...

While a vast number of government policies cause a decline in work, let me mention just six:

• Extended unemployment benefits.

• Expansion of food stamps.

• Higher taxes on workers, especially the most productive ones.

• Increases in Social Security disability payments.

• Increases in Pell Grants and other forms of federal higher education aid.

• Increases in minimum wage laws at local, state and federal levels.

...No nation ever achieved greatness when vast portions of its productive workforce were idle. America will not regain its economic vitality until it ends this war on work.

• Richard Vedder is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, professor of economics at Ohio University and co-author of "Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in America."

Link: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/011714-686845-government-punishes-work-rewards-dependency.htm
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There's no shame in starting at the bottom

From CNBC.com:

 We've been hearing a lot about the plight of the minimum-wage worker lately.

On Monday morning, these workers are sitting in my freshman economics class wondering if they should feel like victims.

I tell them just the opposite: They'd be a victim if that opportunity were taken away. And that's exactly what many people across the country are inadvertently demanding.

 Over the past year, workers have pitched strikes in hundreds of cities across the country, demanding a minimum wage of up to $15 per hour to replace the current $7.25 minimum wage. As Diana Ransom points out in Inc. Magazine, that adds up to $15,000 more a year for each worker. Sounds good for the worker — if that job exists.

The problem is that the money has to come from somewhere, and when employers are forced to pay more than the labor is worth — when the contribution of the worker doesn't match the cost to employ him — employers simply won't offer the job. And that consequence will fall hardest on young people who deserve the opportunity to take the first step in their careers.

The reality is that minimum-wage workers look a lot more like my college freshmen than the single mom with kids we've been reading about in the headlines. More than half of all minimum-wage workers are under the age of 25, and many are students trying to pay their way through school. Only about 15 percent of minimum-wage workers are heads of households with children...
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Link: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101340105