Fox News Cites Flawed and Biased "Study"

Fox News reports "Welfare pays more than minimum wage in most states". Fox News cites "a study" by Michael D. Tanner and Charles Hughes at the libertarian "think tank" Cato Institute who writes:

"The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work. 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. Moreover, states should consider ways to shrink the gap between the value of welfare and work by reducing current benefit levels and tightening eligibility requirements."

From their 52-page study (PDF):

"Only 2.6 percent of full-time workers are poor, as defined by the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) standard, compared with 23.9 percent of adults who do not work. Even part-time work makes a significant difference; only 15 percent of part-time workers are poor."

The Cato Institute says that where I live in the State of Nevada, the total "welfare package" is $31,409 a year --- and gives this as it's source:

U.S. Census Bureau, “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010,” Table 4, p. 15

Response to the Cato Institute from the Economic Policy Institute:

The Cato Institute recently released a wildly misleading report by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes, which essentially claims that what low-wage workers and their families can expect to receive from “welfare” dwarfs the wages they can expect from working. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/cato-study-distorts-truth-welfare-work/#sthash.HIqE0isy.dpuf

The Cato Institute recently released a wildly misleading report by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes, which essentially claims that what low-wage workers and their families can expect to receive from “welfare” dwarfs the wages they can expect from working. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/cato-study-distorts-truth-welfare-work/#sthash.HIqE0isy.dpuf

The Cato Institute recently released a wildly misleading report by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes, which essentially claims that what low-wage workers and their families can expect to receive from “welfare” dwarfs the wages they can expect from working. - See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/cato-study-distorts-truth-welfare-work/#sthash.HIqE0isy.dpuf

The Cato Institute recently released a wildly misleading report by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes, which essentially claims that what low-wage workers and their families can expect to receive from “welfare” dwarfs the wages they can expect from working....Tanner and Hughes make the assumption that these families receive simultaneous assistance from all of the following programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, Housing Assistance Payments, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC), and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). It is this simultaneous assistance from multiple sources that lets the entire “welfare benefits package” identified by Cato add up to serious money. But it’s absurd to assume that someone would receive every one of these benefits, simultaneously.

As a single man with no income and no assets, I only qualify for SNAP (food stamps) worth $200 a month (or $2,400 a year), not $31,409 a year as the Cato Institute claims.

And if I didn't also qualify for an early pension that I worked 20 years for through a union (which is worth only $300 a month if I took an early withdrawal) I could also qualify for $400 in TANF benefits (which would be worth $4,800 a year + $2,400 in SNAP for a total of $7,200 a year --- not $31,409 a year as the Cato Institute claims.

But I don't use TANF because I didn't want to lose my pension, so I have ZERO for an income if you didn't count my food stamps (I didn't have to file a tax return for the past two years...but when I received unemployed benefits in 2010, I had to pay taxes on that income).

And the Republican proposal to cut food stamp spending by 5 percent would eliminate benefits for as many as 6 million Americans, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And as it now stands, regardless of whether Congress passes any new cuts --- thanks to the expiration of a benefit increase from the 2009 stimulus bill --- a household of ONE person (like myself) will see their SNAP benefits cut from $200 a month to $189.

So Fox News and the Cato Institute can eat sh*t and die.