Welfare Reform Kills II
How much is a human life worth ?
Michelle Chen links to and discusses a new study which concludes that welfare reform reduced life expectancy.
I am reminded of an earlier study (there is overlap — the new study analysed the results of two actual experiments one of which was analysed in the old study)
The calculation I see looks more like $64,000/year of life than per life. just guessing- maybe average recipient age of 30 (a woman with young kids) with life expectancy of maybe 80. More like $3.2 million/ life. You still are trading life for money, just a lot more money.
yes the estimate was $64,000 per year of life.
Of course the cost is a transfer — in other words people on AFDC got to consume more and stuff as well as living longer. It isn’t like spending money on say chemotherapy which extends life but is otherwise horrible.
Cut benefits and people die sooner? Totally predictable, as I thought at the time the reforms were signed.
Did this save money? Apparently not. Food stamp use, for instance, rose steadily as Americans lost other sources of aid. And another, hidden cost increased steeply — the food bank system, ostensibly “free” but in fact an untracked tax on the charitable donors and volunteers who make the system function.
What other damages resulted? Predictably, as you force more people into the workforce, people who have no choice but to seek employment, the wages offered will fall. And not just for the people booted off AFDC, but for all the other workers already employed in those sectors.
Noni
>>>the wages offered will fall. And not just for the people booted off AFDC, but for all the other workers already employed in those sectors.<<<
The next stage?
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The ultimate – federally prosecutable — sweetheart labor contract may be no contract at all.
No one would doubt the criminality of a mob union boss and/or an employer threatening to fire workers for speaking out against a mobbed-up sweetheart contract – in order to obtain for themselves the pay and benefit moneys that might otherwise have gone to employees through fair bargaining practices. A for certain RICO or Hobbs Act target.
http://ricoact.com/
Why shouldn't the exact same extortionate activity be viewed in the exact same extortionate light when union busting “consultants” and ownership threaten to strip away workers' economic livelihoods should they dare to participate in a federally approved path to establish federally approved union bargaining rights?
US Attorneys — Criminal Resource Manual 2403
http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm02403.htm
In current (virtually universal) practice this economically — and by extension politically — ruinous extortion is “punished” only under administrative law laid down by the National Labor Relations Board — and employers found guilty pay only a (usually small) compensation for lost wages (not a penalty).
Alternate route: if any state independently outlaws this form of labor market extortion with a penalty of at least one year in prison, federal prosecution can automatically step in.
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Don't be so passive and without hope.
The costin human life never seems to be discussed before the legislation is passed.
That’s because it never dawns on those passing such stuff that there might be a cost other than to their pocket.
When one mows the lawn, it is the rare person that thinks about or even knows the effects on all the other creatures — rabbits, nematodes, butterflies, spiders — that are involved with that patch of grass. And in a sense, that is the way a nation must be managed. You can’t cut the lawn leaf by leaf, while evacuating the affected microfauna ahead of the blade.
BUT — disregarding individual welfare is different from being oblivious to it. It is even worse being oblivious to the fact that without the microfauna, the macrofauna are in deep trouble.
Noni
That might be relevant if it were the ” rabbits, nematodes, butterflies, spiders” who were mowing the lawns.
No fear!
The pentagon goes through trillions to make sure you won’t be harmed by a goatherd in Iraghistan, or a fictitious missile from NK or Iran.
Well, you have persuaded me that the Clintons belong in a jail cell not far from the one Rick Snyder also is not in.
How evil does the lesser evil have to be before you don’t vote for it?