I help at our local Food Pantry (or Food Bank) to help the poor and needy. I have served many meals at my Church to poor and needy. And you are right, that MANY are working poor. But there are many that get FREE Stuff (money, EBT, healthcare [Medicaid], housing), and and do NOTHING to help themselves. They do not work; they do not have a job. Some are old, some are infirmed, but too many young, healthy Americans refuse to work and show no perseverance to hold a job long-term.
The USA is a very generous nation and very generous people. One problem, as I see it, is that we are TOO Generous and the Democrats, in Congress and under the Biden Admin, want to simply give money away and spend money we do not have. I will provide one small example, for now. The Extra $300 unemployment per week, along with state unemployment benefits, means that many jobs go unfilled, as the total benefits result in "earning" $16 per hour TO SIT AND DO NOTHING. Many businesses cannot find workers for the unfilled jobs. AND yes, many or even most are low wage jobs. BUT they are jobs that can be done by many currently unemployed and can earn wages for the worker and would help PAY taxes and not suck more money from the Federal Government. Many businesses need workers and there are shortages of goods and products as Federal Government intrusions in the market place have disrupted the economy, to use a Classic economic argument, as expressed by economists who follow Milton Friedman.
Friedman’s book has had a substantial influence on the economics profession. One measure of that influence is the change in the treatment of monetary policy given by MIT Keynesian Paul Samuelson in his best-selling textbook, Economics. In the 1948 edition Samuelson wrote dismissively that “few economists regard Federal Reserve monetary policy as a panacea for controlling the business cycle.” But in 1967 Samuelson said that monetary policy had “an important influence” on total spending. The 1985 edition, coauthored with Yale’s William Nordhaus, states, “Money is the most powerful and useful tool that macroeconomic policymakers have,” adding that the Fed “is the most important factor” in making policy.
https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Friedman.html
One more example and this is personal. After my son was laid off, he drew unemployment for a long time. While this occurred, he applied for jobs. (And he did not JUS do so to satisfy the requirement to continue to receive unemployment. He also hired a "head hunter" to assist in his job search.) As this was going on, the Democrats wanted to extend these benefits from some 53 weeks to 100 weeks, to nearly 2 years. At some point, I was going to tell my son to take a rather low wage job, but as long as he was getting those benefits, there was NO need to do so.
How long is long enough for unemployment benefits? And as a macro-economic matter, how big a deficit in the Federal budget is TOO large?
Enuff for now. I have to go to work.
