BERNIE BRAIN FART
Something smells really bad.
It’s called the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act and it is the latest brain fart from the man, the myth, the legend Senator Bernie Sanders.
This bill which could have come straight out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged would tax corporations with more than 500 employees at 100% for every dollar their employees receive from welfare programs such as the SNAP program (food-stamps), Section 8 housing, Medicaid and even school-breakfast/lunch /dinner program. Bernie Sanders seems to think that it is the responsibility of the employer to make sure that all of the needs of the employee is met and the government should not have to provide anything. If the government does happen to provide, then the employer would have to send the value of that government hand-out to Washington D.C. where all the little bureaucrats could then get their grubby little hands on the money and get their take or in Godfather 2 parlance “wet their beak,” before dispersing the funds.
Is Bernie Sanders, his apostles like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kamala Harris and others, plus their cult followers the Democratic Socialists of America so stupid to think that taxing employers that are hiring welfare recipients is going to be beneficial for them in finding a job?
If you tax employers when they employ welfare recipients it would obviously discourage employers from hiring them. Why would any sane employer hire someone at an increased cost without the offset of greater productivity? The bill accounts for this inevitability by prohibiting employers from asking if a job candidate is receiving welfare. If you don’t think that employers and hiring managers will be able to figure out who is who and what is what in regards to welfare recipients in a simple interview, you are nuts.
Andy Puzder the former CEO of CKE restaurants which includes the chains Carls’s Jr. and Hardees which makes him quite versed on entry level work and employment stated in the Wall Street Journal…
Putting welfare recipients at a disadvantage in the job market would diminish the effectiveness of government efforts to encourage work. Able-bodied adults without dependents must work at least part-time or participate in a work program to receive food stamps for more than three months in a 36-month period. Why require welfare recipients to work and then put them at a competitive disadvantage when they try to find a job?
The act would exacerbate the perverse incentives welfare recipients face due to what policy wonks call the welfare cliff. Welfare programs can punish people who work because even a slight increase in income may result in a severe decrease in government benefits. Eligibility for food stamps ends when annual gross income exceeds 130% of the federal poverty line. In most states, Medicaid eligibility ends when gross income exceeds 138% of poverty. Some employees make the rational economic decision to work less, keeping their income below the cutoff and retaining thousands of dollars in benefits.
Should the bill become law, an employer with employees earning an amount short of the welfare cliff could raise the employee’s compensation by increasing their wages or hours just enough to push them off the cliff, throw them off benefits and avoid the tax. Ironically, employers could lower the cost of employing workers by increasing their compensation while the workers would have less to support themselves or their families because they got a raise.
Should we not be encouraging employers to hire people that are on welfare? This Bernie brain fart would put welfare recipients at a distinct disadvantage to youngsters living with their parents and of course robots. In fact, this Bernie brain fart might lead us down the road to the Terminator apocalypse much sooner than we all thought.
Puzder Andy Stop Bezos From Hiring Poor People? Wall Street Journal 9/18/18
