The Welfare Trap: Mapping Benefits and Income

A report from the Illinois Policy Institute shows why people are trapped on welfare. The graph below shows what happens to a typical welfare recipient in Cook County with two children as she's tempted to earn more money. This person optimizes her income by earning between $8.25 and $12/hour ($16,500 to $24,000 per year). Why would anyone seek a better job paying, say, $20/hour, when it results in less income?

As a final insult, politicians in places like Seattle are enacting $15/hour minimum wage laws, which actually decrease the income of the very people they purport to care about. All of this underlines Drum's Rule 1: Politicians who claim to be "solving a problem" by meddling with market forces, inevitably make the problem worse.  

Manufacturing Jobs Did Not Disappear Overseas

For anyone who thinks the reason American manufacturing jobs have disappeared is because companies have "shipped jobs overseas" consider this inconvenient fact.

Since 1979, durable manufacturing output in the United States has increased 167% while employment in these industries has declined 37%.  Manufacturers are simply using technology to do more with fewer people. That has nothing to do with Mexico or China. In fact the same trend to producing more with less labor is going on in Mexico and China as well. 

Donald Trump, nor anyone else, is going to change this.