Ways To Make Extra Money On Maternity Leave

what if i told you that the government effectivelypunishes poor people for working? sound too sad to be true? let me tell you a story. i once had a studentwho interned at florida's welfare program for low-income families. one day, a distraughtmother and her teenage son came into the office. their benefits had been cut. and they wereunable to pay their bills. and she didn't know why. my student searched and searched to figureout why this was the case. and he made an unsettling discovery. it turns out that theteenage son had worked additional hours at his part-time job. he had been doing goodwork. and his boss extended the number of

hours. and this allowed the teenage son tobring home more income to the family. but that little bit of extra money reducedthe public assistance that the family was eligible for. in fact, the cut was so deepthat those extra hours worked actually lowered the total income the family had to live on. this is a horrible situation, one faced bymillions of families. instead of experiencing a gradual decline in benefits as their earningsincrease, the government abruptly strips the benefits away. it punishes them for working. now imagine if you and your family were strugglingfinancially. and you had the opportunity to work additional hours or take a job. but indoing so you would actually make your family

worse off. how would you respond to these perverse incentives?you'd likely scale back on the number of hours worked or not take the job. while individualprograms attempt to reduce benefits gradually, they often do so at the same time. and thiscan result in a large, abrupt reduction in benefits. at times, individual programs alsohave abrupt, sudden declines in benefits. take, for example, the federal food stampprogram, snap. for a parent with two children, the benefits are gradually reduced as earningsapproach $30,000. but once the parent earns over $30,000, the benefits suddenly drop. this is crazy, whatever you think about publicassistance for the poor. we can all agree

that this is the wrong way to do it. peopleshould be rewarded, not punished, when they work. the welfare system is so poorly designedthat it is trapping many people that it was created to help. my name is sean mulholland, professor of economics.and i believe there are ways to fix the system. if you'd like to learn more about these issuesand explore potential alternatives, please join me for a free online program at learnliberty academy. please click here to register. i hope to see you there.