{"id":6952,"date":"2015-02-28T12:29:15","date_gmt":"2015-02-28T16:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=6952"},"modified":"2015-02-28T12:29:15","modified_gmt":"2015-02-28T16:29:15","slug":"massachusetts-bureaucracy-gets-1-in-13-households-to-come-in-and-beg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/28\/massachusetts-bureaucracy-gets-1-in-13-households-to-come-in-and-beg\/","title":{"rendered":"Massachusetts bureaucracy gets 1 in 13 households to come in and beg"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Many In Mass. Await The Next Blizzard With No Heat”<\/a> is supposed to be a heartstrings-pulling story about\u00a0\u00a0how the government isn’t doing enough to help poorer families in Massachusetts pay for heat. What struck me is how many people had to jump through an extra welfare hoop. The article says “Roughly 200,000 households in Massachusetts qualify for help”. Census data<\/a> show only about 2.5 million households in the state total. Thus 1 in 13 Massachusetts households has to apply every year to\u00a0a government-paid worker who will decide whether or not to give them some cash. Note that these workers are different from the ones who decide whether or not to give out food stamps, so if you want food and<\/em> heat you have to visit at least two offices. And those workers are different from the ones who decide whether or not to give out a free or subsidized house. There will be a separate process, with additional government-paid workers, to get free health insurance. And then there is a separate group of\u00a0government\u00a0workers who hand out unrestricted (TANF) cash…<\/p>\n

Just how many government workers can a poor American support?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Many In Mass. 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