Why Do America’s Workers Need Welfare?

Hartmann Report -  Why is it that anybody working full time in the richest country in the history of the world should need any sort of government assistance just to eat and stay healthy? Shouldn’t a full-time paycheck — any paycheck for any sort of work — pay enough that people can live a decent life?

As Senate majority leader John Thune said yesterday, “The best health care is a job…” What he failed to note was that that’s true of Denmark but not America.

What, after all, is the point of a minimum wage if not to make sure that people who are working don’t have to steal just to stay alive? Shouldn’t any reasonable capitalist society be organized in such a way that a single full-time worker can raise a family, put their kids through school, take an annual vacation, and have a reasonable retirement?

This is not a new or novel idea.

Among the developed world, the U.S. stands virtually alone in imposing punitive, bureaucratic work requirements for access to food, housing, and health care, all services that are treated as rights in most other wealthy nations.

Welfare in pretty much every other developed country in the world is limited to the disabled, sick, or caregivers because everybody who’s working is making enough to cover their basic living expenses. In Denmark, for example, MacDonalds’ workers earn $22/hour, in addition to getting six weeks of paid vacation, generous pension contributions, overtime pay, and paid sick leave. (And a Big Mac costs ~$5.75 there, compared to $5.69 here.)