Wellfare?

[Joods]

Define "don't really earn it".

I mean they don't really do work to "earn" the money they generate. Its more like eternal christmas presents than earning your daily bread as it were.

The welfare system wasn't designed to make people rich and you're an idiot if you think that's the case. There is no "eternal christmas" for the working poor. Many of the US working poor depend on at least one form of government assistance to get by. 

Who are the working poor in the United states? 

Here are the working poor.

The “working poor” are people who spend 27 weeks or more in a year in the labor force either working or looking for work but whose incomes fall below the poverty level. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 9.5 million of people who spent at least 27 weeks in the labor force were poor. That year, the working poor comprised 6.3 percent of all individuals in the labor force.
The majority of the people who live below the poverty level do not work, but this includes children, the elderly and the disabled poor. Among the poor between ages 18 and 64 who are not disabled or in school in 2014, 51.8 percent worked for part of the previous year. However, only 25.2 percent of these “able-bodied” poor worked more than 50 weeks.
In 2014, the working poor as a fraction of all people in the labor force for 27 weeks or more were:

• 11.7% Black, 11.7% Hispanic/Latino, 5.5% White, 4.3% Asian
  
  
• 7.2% women, 5.5% men
  
  
• 18.3% with less than a high school diploma
  
  
• 8.3% high school graduates with no college education
  
  
• 2% with a bachelor’s degree or higher
  

So...Fuck you. I'm in this class of people. My domestic partner is in this class of people. We support three kids. We struggle to make it on the $17.85 an hour that he makes. And I am back on Disability. 

How about instead of continuing your diatribe of lumping people together and considering us lazy, you shut the fuck up since you clearly don't know what you are talking about. 

Are wages or jobs the problem for the working poor?

The connection between poverty and labor markets is complex. High, stable wages and stable full-time employment can keep many out of poverty. However, stagnation of wages at the bottom of the US wage distribution over the past several decades and continuing low rates of full-time work, especially in single-parent households, often leave families below the official poverty threshold.

bold mine. 

Labor Markets and Poverty

In 1996, the United States reformed its welfare system, linking benefits more directly to labor force participation. When combined with the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which subsidizes low wage workers through the tax code, work has become a cornerstone of American anti-poverty policy. At the same time, rising income inequality and stagnant real wages among less-skilled workers mean that working one’s way out of poverty is more challenging than ever before.

With these trends as a backdrop, a number of new questions are emerging. For example, how can government programs best address poverty if full-time work itself does not provide sufficient income to move many families out of poverty? Given the evolving consensus that poor mothers should be expected to work, how will women’s employment, family structure and poverty evolve in the 21st Century?

Oh and if you think that college grads have it any better, think again. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati...e/3324303/

Published 12:48 p.m. ET Oct. 31, 2013 | Updated 12:51 p.m. ET Oct. 31, 2013

A college degree is no longer enough.

A study released this week by Chegg, the Student Hub and the Harris Interactive found a substantial skill gap between students' self-assessed readiness when entering the workforce and the skills employers actually want.
"The speed of which things are changing is much faster than institutions are able to change," says Dan Rosensweig, president and CEO of Chegg.
In a survey of 2,001 students or recent graduates — 18- to 24-year-olds — and 1,000 hiring managers, fewer than two in five hiring managers who had interviewed recent graduates in the past two years found them prepared for a job in their field of study.
In contrast, half of all students surveyed felt they were job-ready upon graduation, creating a 17-point gap in the different perceptions between both parties.
Facing a grim job market, a slow economic restoration and competition from other graduates, college students are scrambling to stand out.

I cannot imagine things have gotten any better for college grads in the last four years.