The left is unable or unwilling to articulate any limitation of the welfare state and unable or unwilling to acknowledge the social costs of long term dependency.

Moves to push the recipients to work must recognize and correct the policy hurdles placed on the providers of jobs, and the tax disincentives on those on on the bottom rungs.  When your net after tax income equals the costs of the benefits you lose you face an effective tax rate of 100%.  A strong pro-growth economic policy would make great progress on many economic and social problems.

from the editors of National Review, A Better Way:

Some of what’s in Ryan’s proposal will be familiar from earlier efforts, including time limits on the receipt of food stamps and housing subsidies for adults who are able to work. The vast majority (about three-fourths) of able-bodied adults without dependents who are receiving welfare benefits do not work; the larger body of welfare recipients, those with dependents (who are exempted from TANF work requirements), work at low rates, too. The great necessity is moving these dependents toward work, and the reasoning here is straightforward: The poverty rate for people with full-time jobs is 2.7 percent; for those with part-time jobs, it is 17.5 percent; for those with no jobs, it is 32.3 percent. Two-thirds of the Americans in poverty do not work at all, and a quarter of them work only part-time.

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