Category: Massachusetts

Someone smarter than I collected tens of thousands of dollars in pandemic unemployment benefits in my name; what next?

by philg

I got a letter from the Department of Revenue back in Maskachusetts. They were upset that I failed to report $12,600 in coronapanic unemployment benefits received in 2020. As I had not filed for unemployment nor received $12,600, this came as a shock. The claim did not start until mid-October 2020 so it is safe to assume that another $20,000+ was harvested in 2021.

When I tried to log into the Massachusetts unemployment web site with my Social Security number, I found that authorization was required from someone with a phone number ending in 1253 or an email address at barid.com, “the most functional webmail in the Arab World”:

My memory of 2020 is dim, so it is theoretically possible that I myself filed for unemployment in 2020. However, it is not possible that I was able to read and write Arabic in 2020. Therefore, due to my illiteracy in Arabic, I’m 99.99% sure that this is a fraud situation.

It is strange that the state couldn’t figure out the fraud by itself. During the purported period of unemployment, the employer (a small LLC) was continuing to make regular payments for unemployment insurance, state income tax withholding, etc. How is it possible that one agency within the state was receiving payments for an employed person while another one was making payments to an unemployed person with the same SSN and a presumably different mailing address? My phone number is readily available. The state government has enough money to pay out tens of thousands of dollars, but not to attempt to make a phone call to the person corresponding to the SSN and ask “Did you actually file for unemployment?” Nor enough money to compare SSNs in two databases?

[The same government that fails to question how someone for whom payroll taxes are being paid regularly can also be “unemployed” and entitled to unemployment checks is the one that we’re supposed to trust regarding how to prevent an aerosol virus that mutates constantly.]

Has anyone else had a similar situation? A friend who employs 25 people in Maskachusetts says that fraudulent unemployment claims were filed for 5 of his employees. I’m thinking that this will take at least 40 hours of time (which otherwise could have been billed to clients at $550 per hour) and $3,000 in fees to my accountant to untangle. So the cost to the U.S. economy of enriching a single Arabic speaker with $12,600 will be at least $37,600. And I will get to do it all over again for 2021. This is another cost of coronapanic lockdowns and everything that flowed from them. A smaller, poorer economy (let’s assume that the $12,600 actually ended up somewhere out of the U.S.) is one in which people will live shorter lives (income being positively correlated with longevity). I’m going to mark this down as evidence for my theory that the lockdowns will end up killing far more Americans than SARS-CoV-2 ever did or ever will. (The biggest killer will be of today’s children, whose adult lives will be shortened because they were deprived of a year of education in the States of Virtue.)

Readers: Any tips for fixing this?

Progress so far:

  • I filed an online fraud report with the Maskachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance
  • I called the customer service phone number, (877) 626-6800, on the Maskachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance web site. All of the state workers are out serving meals at the off-island internment camp for the Vineyard 50, it seems, as the wait time to talk to an agent was 42 minutes (I chose the offered callback option, but was never called back). The agency apparently is not interested in fraud reports as all of the numbers that can be pressed on the phone keypad are advertised as leading to different ways to get more money from the government. There is no mention of an option to (1) stop getting checks, (2) report having found a job, or (3) report fraud.
  • I called the Massachusetts Department of Revenue and waited on hold for about 15 minutes before being connected to an agent. She was able to look up the 1099G and determined that it had been sent to Loganville, Georgia. In other words, it seems that the state was receiving payments for unemployment insurance for someone who was actively employed in Massachusetts while simultaneously sending out money with the same SSN claiming to be unemployed in Georgia.
  • I called the MA Unemployment folks again and waited on hold for 30 minutes before being disconnected.
  • I called the MA Unemployment folks again and waited on hold for nearly an hour before being connected to a lady who explained that the department had allowed people to register for unemployment and request electronic documents. They never had to show up in person, never had to submit any ID (like for voting!), and just received a river of cash (ACH or debit card). The agency never made any attempt to cross-check with reports from employers regarding who had a job, either at the time the money was flying out the door or in a later reconciliation process. Fraud identification is left entirely up to the individual, she explained. Corrected 1099G forms aren’t sent out unless someone requests it and the 1099G correction is entirely manual. So the Massachusetts Unemployment Assistance folks, by leaving all of this inaccurate information out there, create a huge workload for the MA DOR and also for the federal IRS, spawning potentially hundreds of thousands of audits for Biden’s Army of 87,000 (the Spartans managed with 300).
  • The lady connected me to a fraud specialist within the Department of Unemployment Assistance who said that he had no idea how long it would take to issue a corrected 1099G. They would have to “investigate”.

Related:

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If the Migrants expelled from Martha’s Vineyard can afford lawyers, why not plane tickets back to San Antonio?

by philg

“Migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard have filed a lawsuit against Gov. DeSantis” (state-sponsored NPR, 9/20):

A civil rights law firm filed a federal class action lawsuit on Tuesday against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and others for transporting around 50 immigrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, without shelter or resources in place.

Alianza Americas’ Executive Director Oscar Chacón said that DeSantis used the migrants to “advance a hate-filled agenda.” “That is why we have taken the steps to legally challenge what we view as not only a morally reprehensible action, but what we believe is also illegal,” he said.

Attorneys want DeSantis and his fellow defendants to be banned from “inducing immigrants to travel across state lines by fraud and misrepresentation,” as well as damages “for the harm suffered by the migrants.”

The migrants were harmed by being transported to a place that people were willing to pay $616 per night (plus taxes and the “resort fee” scam) to stay in (I checked the late-September Edgartown hotel rates a few days ago).

The Vineyard 50 have enough money, either in their pockets or via donation, to pay lawyers at least $500,000 to push a lawsuit through Federal court.

Is there a cheaper way to mitigate the harm that they’re suffering by being in Massachusetts surrounded by the fully vaccinated and masked applying “No Human Being is Illegal” signs and bumper stickers to lawns and cars rather than in Texas, which by implication is a superior place to live? If the Vineyard 50 can get from the off-island detention camp in which they’ve been interned to Boston’s Logan Airport, a one-way plane ticket back to the San Antonio paradise from which they were snatched is about $100:

For less than $6,000 every migrant could be back in San Antonio.

Perhaps the Vineyard residents who cheered as the migrants were bussed out of their upscale town could go to Logan Airport to see them off. Hawaiians have a tradition of hanging leis around the necks of people who arrive (“Nothing says Aloha like our Classic Orchid Lei”). The property owners of Martha’s Vineyard could establish a tradition of providing leis to migrants who are departing back to Texas and/or Florida (“Nothing says Adios like our Maskachusetts State Flower Lei made from mayflowers”).

From the Boston Globe recently, “Plane towing a banner reading ‘Vineyard Hypocrites’ circles Martha’s Vineyard”:

The last part is my favorite. Given an island whose real estate was already half empty due to the summer season winding down, it was a “herculean” effort for some of the country’s wealthiest people to shelter 50 migrants (out of millions) for two nights.

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The immigrant makes a foray into Cambridge

by philg

A friend who emigrated (“high skill”) to the U.S. from Eastern Europe (not Russia itself!) texted our chat group:

I drove into Harvard Square for the first time in about 3 years. Driving through Cambridge: George Floyd yard signs, fair share yard signs [extra tax on the rich], BLM, resist, persist, love is love … The city is as decorated as Red Square was on the anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution

What’s the “fair share” amendment? It will undo the injustice in the Maskachusetts constitution that prevents the nation’s most progressive state from imposing a progressive income tax:

To provide the resources for quality public education and affordable public colleges and universities , and for the repair and maintenance of roads , bridges and public transportation , all revenues received in accordance with this paragraph shall be expended, subject to appropriation , only for these purposes . In addition to the taxes on income otherwise authorized under this Article, there shall be an additional tax of 4 percent on that portion of annual taxable income in excess of $1,000,000 (one million dollars) reported on any return related to those taxes. To ensure that this additional tax continues to apply only to the commonwealth’s highest income taxpayers , this $1,000,000 (one million dollars) income level shall be adjusted annually to reflect any increases in the cost of living by the same method used for federal income tax brackets. This paragraph shall apply to all tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2023 .

I wonder what the base is for the inflation adjustment. The value of $1 million on Election Day 2022? The value of $1 million on January 1, 2023? The value of $1 million in April 2024 (the first time that the tax has to be calculated)? At current rates of inflation, this is an important question!

Some inequality in and near New Bedford, MA, 2020 (photo: my friend Tony; helicopter flying: me):

Needless to say, property owners and realtors in Florida will be delighted if this new tax passes! (See “The Flight of New York City’s Wealthy Was a Once-in-a-Century Shock” (NYT): “The Manhattan residents who moved to Palm Beach County had an average income of $728,351, IRS data showed.”)

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Migrants to Nantucket?

by philg

The 50 asylum-seekers sent to Martha’s Vineyard have reached sanctuary in the middle of a military base in the middle of an off-island forest. Where can the next group of migrants who want to escape to a properly governed Science-following state land? Here’s an email that I received today from an airfare alert service:

Only $234 for a migrant to start enjoying his/her/zir/their best life amidst the “No Human is Illegal” sign forest of Massachusetts, entering via an island of vacant-through-May mansions. Given TSA rules, perhaps this would work only for undocumented migrants who have documents such as passports.

I wonder if there will be a sufficient supply, though. “Migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard have filed a lawsuit against Gov. DeSantis” (state-sponsored NPR):

Attorneys want DeSantis and his fellow defendants to be banned from “inducing immigrants to travel across state lines by fraud and misrepresentation,” as well as damages “for the harm suffered by the migrants.”

“Advocates for migrants who were sent to Martha’s Vineyard sue Ron DeSantis” (Guardian):

According to the complaint, the Venezuelans, who are pursuing the proper channels for lawful immigration status in the US, “experienced cruelty akin to what they fled in their home country. Defendants manipulated them, stripped them of their dignity, deprived them of their liberty, bodily autonomy, due process, and equal protection under law, and impermissibly interfered with the federal government’s exclusive control over immigration in furtherance of an unlawful goal and a personal political agenda.”

If the cruelty here in the U.S., due to the existence of Republicans, makes life in the U.S. as bad as life Venezuela, why take the trouble to leave Venezuela? Or maybe the migrants will leave Venezuela, but stop and request asylum in one of the countries through which they would previously have simply passed?

  • “The Work versus Welfare Trade‐​Off: 2013” (CATO); Table 4 shows the dramatic superiority of being on welfare in Maskachusetts (spending power 1.2X what a worker at the median wage gets) compared to cruel Florida (only 0.4X the spending power of a median worker). The absolute dollar figures can be ignored because they are in pre-Biden money.
  • “Nantucket restaurant desperate to fill jobs, hiring 8th graders” (Fox Business, 2021)
  • a Massachusetts resident commenting in a chat group: “[folks on Martha’s Vineyard] have hundreds, maybe thousands, of empty beds and $9.8 million budget surplus in just one of the three towns alone to pay rental on those beds. What do they think other cities do? NYC pays $500 a night to house each person. They have the lowest tax rate of any town in the entire state and had tons of room to raise the property tax to replenish the surplus. Instead they called in a 125 person military response to remove them to an internment camp. So much for the yard sign virtue signaling. We need Martha’s Vineyard Airlift 2022 T shirts.” (the correct figure for empty beds on MVY is surely “thousands” not “hundreds” because the difference in in-season/off-season population is more than 50,000)
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Will Maskachusetts allow journalists into Camp DeSantis?

by philg

The arrival of one million migrants into Texas border towns is a minor issue. On the other hand, the arrival of 50 migrants into an island with vacant houses sufficient to hold 50,000 people (the summer population bump) was a crisis that required calling out the Maskachusetts National Guard. The 50 migrants are now off island in a concentration camp within a military base that is itself within a forest in the middle of Nowheresville, MA. Going forward, the only way that an elite Vineyard resident might encounter a migrant is if his/her/zir/their Gulfstream suffers a double-engine failure and crash-lands in the woods of the Inner Cape. Because the migrants arrived in Massachusetts originally on Air DeSantis, let’s call their final destination Camp DeSantis.

In order to disprove accusations of hypocrisy, if there is any access by journalists to Camp DeSantis, the images and reports will have to show that these are the best cared-for asylum-seekers in the history of humanity. On the other hand, if the Four Seasons-style rooms at Camp DeSantis and three-star catered meals are described and illustrated, people might begin to ask “Why isn’t this infrastructure used to care for the 18,000+ people in Massachusetts who are experiencing homelessness?”

What do readers think? Are we going to see regular reports on The Fifty and how great their lives are, courtesy of the open-hearted migrant-welcoming Democrats of Massachusetts? Something like the Theresienstadt documentary, but broken up into tweets?

Related:

  • Progressives in Maine want U.S. to admit more low-skill migrants… (August 2022): …. who will live somewhere other than in Maine.
  • What it takes to welcome refugees and other immigrants (2018): How can a town survive with 10 percent of its population being unskilled unemployed refugees with four kids each? I wonder if the answer is harvesting federal subsidies. Our poorest cities often have sparkling new hospitals, built by mining elderly citizens for Medicare dollars. Could it be that Erie is mining refugees for the Federal Welfare that attaches to them? Each refugee is entitled to housing, health care, and food, all of which will be funded nationally, but purchased in the local economy.
  • “Yes, Florida allocated $12 million to transport migrants out of the state” (CBS): Florida’s Freedom First Budget included $12 million for a program to “transport unauthorized aliens” out of the state, including locations such as Martha’s Vineyard. (in other words, it is not completely fair to credit DeSantis with “Air DeSantis” because the money was appropriated by the legislature)
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The Jews of Martha’s Vineyard stand with immigrants and refugees

by philg

From the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center:

“We stand with immigrants, with refugees,…” Should this be amended to “We stand with immigrants and refugees for up to 36 hours“? “MA National Guard Activated To Aid Martha’s Vineyard Migrants” (Patch):

Gov. Charlie Baker will activate the National Guard to assist the 50 men, women and children shipped Wednesday to Martha’s Vineyard by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Baker said Friday morning the migrants will be transferred to a shelter at Joint Base Cape Cod in Buzzard’s Bay. The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency will coordinate food and other services for them. About 125 National Guard members will assist, Baker said.

Joint Base Cape Cod has been used as an emergency shelter in the past, including during COVID-19 and after Hurricane Katrina.

DeSantis said the flights to Martha’s Vineyard were part of an effort to “transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations.” The Florida Legislature has earmarked $12 million to transport “unauthorized aliens” out of state.

I’m curious about the use of the word “emergency” to describe 50 migrants, out of more than 1 million asylum-seekers admitted recently (nytimes), appearing on an island that has a huge supply of vacant houses (the typical house on MVY is occupied only seasonally).

How much room is there for housing migrants on MVY through May 2023? From mvy.com:

The Vineyard is home to roughly 17,000 year-round residents. During the summer months, the population increases to nearly 200,000. Sixty-three percent of all homes on the Vineyard belong to seasonal residents.

From the Martha’s Vineyard Commission:

The summer population is five times the winter population, about 75,000 compared to about 15,000.

So it would be straightforward to shelter at least 50,000 migrants on MVY if folks on the island who have displayed “No Human Being is Illegal” signs in their yards wished to provide shelter. (It looks like 60,000 migrants could be sheltered, but there nearly 10,000 tourists who show up only for the day in the summer (like we used to!). If the goal was to shelter migrants with the same amount of space per person as enjoyed by the rich white progressives who come for summer vacation, the September-May capacity would be 50,000.)

Related:

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Migrants are welcome on the island of Martha’s Vineyard….

by philg

… but they need to be “off island”. “‘I Ended Up on This Little Island’: Migrants Land in Political Drama” (New York Times, today):

Ardenis Nazareth, newly arrived from Venezuela, was standing in a McDonald’s parking lot across the street from a San Antonio shelter a few days ago contemplating his next steps. … Then she made an enticing offer: a free flight to a “sanctuary,” he recalled, where there were people to help them get on their feet. The place was called Massachusetts. … he was surprised when he found himself on Martha’s Vineyard, a small, picturesque vacation destination in the Atlantic. “I thought I was coming to Boston,” he said. “I ended up on this little island.”

“I left my country to support my family,” said Mr. Nazareth, a 34-year-old construction worker. He said that since leaving his home country 18 months ago he had tried to make a living in Peru and Chile. But he could not make ends meet, and word spread among his friends that Venezuelans were managing to enter the United States, where jobs were plentiful.

On Thursday, Mr. Nazareth expressed gratitude for the warm reception that he and his brethren had received in Martha’s Vineyard. “They’re treating us super well,” he said.

“We’re getting food, clothing, all our needs met. I love Massachusetts!”

The migrants arrived just as the busy season ended and during one of the worst affordable housing shortages in the island’s history.

The church where they are staying is home to the sole homeless shelter on the island. St. Andrew’s sits in a quiet corner of Edgartown, off the main drag where summer visitors feast on dripping ice cream and oysters.

“We are meeting their needs for food, shelter, and we are definitely supplying them with a lot of love,” said Lisa Belcastro, the manager of the only homeless shelter on the island. “They need to be off island. Their immigration appointments are not here.”

Perhaps this need for migrants to “be off island” will abate if the Obamas begin work on a migrant shelter at their 29-acre Martha’s Vineyard estate. Given the number of seasonal houses on MVY, there should be immediate space for at least 50,000 migrants to live between now and May 2023. After that, Google Maps shows that there is plenty of undeveloped land near the MVY airport and to the south. Much of this land is actually owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and thus there would be no obstacle to building permanent housing for as many migrants as wish to settle in this exclusive vacation paradise.

Folks in Massachusetts who say that life in Texas and Florida is intolerable due to malgovernance, the lack of abortion care for pregnant people in reproductive health care settings, etc., now also say that migrants are being injured by being transported from Texas and Florida to Massachusetts. One friend on Facebook, regarding Air DeSantis:

State tax money should not be used to fund a politician primary [sic] at the expense of the lives of asylum seekers whose life’s [sic] are already miserable.

He implies that arriving by chartered jet to MVY is somehow a bad thing for asylum-seekers. If Florida and Texas are bad due to their respective infestations of Republicans, shouldn’t the Massachusetts Democrat be happy and relieved that a migrant has found his/her/zir/their way to Massachusetts? Gavin Newsom says that being given free transportation to a Democrat-governed Science-following state is “inhumane” and that the people who arrange this transportation should be prosecuted as kidnappers.

Not everyone sees this as criminal kidnapping:

Another strange aspect to Democrats’ response to the arrival of migrants in their own states and cities is the allegation that Ron DeSantis is wasting taxpayers’ money by chartering regional jets. Colleges can afford to charter regional jets to move sports teams around. If a state-funded college can afford to charter a regional jet, why can’t a state afford to charter a regional jet or Airbus A320? (Florida state government took in 21 percent more than was spent in the last fiscal year, resulting in a $22 billion surplus. If we assume per-passenger charter costs of $1,000 that’s enough to fund transportation for 22 million migrants.)

Update from Alex (comments below): “MA National Guard Activated To Aid Martha’s Vineyard Migrants”. Rather than enjoy access to water, cash jobs from folks with “No Human Being is Illegal” signs on their front lawns, etc., the 50 migrants will be moved off the island at gunpoint by 125 soldiers and confined to an inland military base.

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The working class buys a mini-split air conditioner for a homeowner in our old town

by philg

Congress and the Biden administration have signed up the working class to pay for the laptop class’s new electric cars ($7,500 each) and also for the gender studies degrees, and attempted degrees, earned by the children of the laptop class (“no one with a federally held loan has had to pay a single dollar in loan payments since President Biden took office”; studentaid.gov).

These programs raise the question “What else can we make a working class renter pay for?”

I was chatting with the owner of a $2 million house in our old town in the Boston suburbs. She had a mini-split air conditioner installed in an accessory apartment that she will be renting out at the fabulously high market rates now due to property owners. I asked her how much it cost. Her response:

$8800. ENTIRE cost rebated by MassSave. Free mini split.

Several of my homeowner friends up in Massachusetts are making huge profits from their rooftop solar systems. The general rate-payers, including the working class renters, have to buy electricity from them at full retail rates or higher, depending on when the systems were installed.

One friend lives in a 12,000-square-foot compound. He installed a solar system in 2016 that, due to subsidies from those who did not own property and/or did not install solar, was completely paid for within 4.7 years. It is now yielding an annual profit of 23 percent of the after-tax-credit 2016 cost.

I get paid double the value of the electric. I get to both use it and sell it after I use it. I know that makes no sense, but Democrats make the rules in MA.

He tried to explain a complex system in which he fake-sells his clean power to companies that want to fake-claim that they use all renewables, but my head was spinning from all of the market distortions.

Perhaps New Jersey runs the same system. Here’s a car with NJ plates (maybe a coronapanic refugee?) that wonders “I don’t know how many freeloaders I can afford??” (If the driver is part of the working class, Joe Biden just added a lot of college graduates to the list with his cancellation of student loan debt!)

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Boston builds a ghetto for the 2SLGBTQQIA+

by philg

From state-sponsored media… “Community unites after an LGBTQ+ senior housing project in Boston was defaced” (NPR, July 14, 2022):

The road to building The Pryde, a Boston housing development aimed at LGBTQ+ seniors, has been surprisingly smooth. That’s what made last weekend’s homophobic vandalism all the more shocking.

Among the slurs and death threats covering the perimeter of the construction site, which takes up nearly an entire city block of the Hyde Park neighborhood, were messages saying, “We will burn this,” “die slow,” and “die by fire.”

Meanwhile, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu also responded on Twitter, writing, “Hate & acts of vandalism will not be tolerated at the Pryde — or anywhere in Boston.”

“This affordable, LGBTQ+ senior housing development has been led by local residents, boosted by neighborhood voices & fueled by united support. We will move even faster to get it done,” Wu said.

Intolerance will not be tolerated by the tolerant!

From the developers:

Pennrose, in partnership with LGBTQ Senior Housing Inc., has been selected by the City of Boston to develop 74 new apartments for seniors 62 and older in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston. Construction has begun on the 120 year old former William Barton Rogers School that will undergo a historic rehabilitation. Rent-restricted studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments will be available to households and individuals at various income tiers (30%, 50%, 60%, 80% and 100% of Area Median Income). Several apartments will be set aside for homeless individuals. A housing lottery will be conducted, and 70% of the apartments will carry a City of Boston resident preference during the initial lease up of the community.

So many questions! First, why aren’t all of the apartments set aside for those who are currently homeless? (who has a greater need for a home than a homeless individual?) Massachusetts needs to catch up to California with its 160,000+ unhoused residents? Second, if Maskachusetts is Tolerance Central, why do members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community have to live apart from those who do not identify as 2SLGBTQQIA+? Would it be okay to build rent-restricted housing for Black people? For Asian American and Pacific Islander people? If discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is forbidden under Massachusetts law, how can this new government-sponsored development discriminate against cisgender heterosexuals who want to live rent-free?

Related:

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Florida’s crummy welfare system leads to a lot more interracial interaction?

by philg

Although I don’t like to sort people by skin color, I have noticed that we interact much more frequently with Black and Latinx people here in Florida than we did in Massachusetts. Everyone who worked on our house in Massachusetts was white, for example, while folks in the service industries here come in a rainbow of skin tones, often within the same crew. For white suburbanites in Boston, Black people might as well be aliens. They exist on a different planet and interactions are uncommon, even in service settings.

Although Florida has a higher percentage of Black residents, the difference is not large enough to explain our experience. I’m wondering if the explanation can be found in the states’ respective welfare systems. CATO’s Work versus Welfare Trade-Off 2013:

In Massachusetts, unless a person puts a $0 value on leisure time, being a successful welfare entrepreneur is vastly smarter, from an economic point of view, than working at the median salary. The spending power of the welfare recipient is 118 percent of the worker’s and that’s before considering cash income that the welfare recipient might obtain from under-the-table work and also discounts to EBT cardholders.

How about in Florida? The same chart shows that Florida is one of the worst states for enjoying the welfare lifestyle (unless you love the beach!). At least as of 2013, a welfare recipient in Florida enjoyed only about 41 percent of the spending power of a worker. Therefore, it is not economically rational to spend multiple generations on welfare unless one puts a very high value on leisure time/Xbox.

Whatever the reason, I think it is good for our kids to see that the well-paid guy who runs a paver restoration business happens to be Black while his helper is white.

Separately, we have learned a lot about pavers! Our patios, walks, and driveway are a mosaic of red bricks and white concrete tiles. Over time, the brick color had faded so that the contrast between these items was reduced. More seriously, tree roots had grown underneath and made the surface uneven. Cleaning up after 20 years of neglect required (1) picking up a lot of the tiles/bricks and removing all of the tree roots underneath, then putting everything back down again, (2) painting the bricks with “concrete stain” to restore their bright color, (3) putting new sand in between all of the bricks and tiles to hold them in place, and (4) sealing everything with clear sealer that is supposed to last 2-3 years (at which point it will just need a pressure wash and a reapplication of the sealer). Total cost to rehab 3,000 square feet of patio? $8,000. That’s 8,000 good reasons to continue being a renter!

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