yes and no. True calling myself an independent would be more accurate. But by your definition we are all probably independent if we vote for a party we don't agree 100% with. So there can be no such thing as a pro life catholic democrat, or a homosexual republican because they call themselves a democrat or a republican, and that's the way they vote, straight ticket everytime?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-07/when-work-punished-ongoing-tragedy-americas-welfare-state Color mine. When Work Is Punished: The Ongoing Tragedy Of America's Welfare State "At issue is the so-called "welfare cliff" beyond which families will literally become poorer the higher their wages, as the drop off in entitlements more than offsets the increase in earnings." "if a single mother raising two children were to accept a pay raise from $12 to $18 per hour, her total resources would fall by nearly 33%" "For single-and two-parent households in Illinois, there is a significant welfare "cliff" where the household may become worse off financially as they work more hours or as their wages increase.That is because the available welfare benefits decline by a greater amount than the increase in earned income." "Welfare cliffs are significant and can trap families. A single mom has the most resources available to her family when she works full time at a wage of $8.25 to $12 an hour. Disturbingly, taking a pay increase to $18 an hour can leave her with about one-third fewer total resources (net income and government benefits). In order to make work "pay" again, she would need an hourly wage of $38 to mitigate the impact of lost benefits and higher taxes"
Fortunately, most of America's poor have jobs, so clearly they are not the main contributors to the declining LFPR.
Some of our liberal Canadian friends always seem to agitate for more socialism in the US, but a few recent studies show that our Northern friends aren't nearly as 'compassionate' as they let on to be. Chart is created "by segmenting the employed population into government employees and all others, i.e., the productive population. Then the total population is divided by the productive population to find out how many people have to be supported by every member of the productive population. A further adjustment is then made by removing non-working spouses and children from the result by subtracting the average household size. The end result is what Murray refers to as “implied public reliance”, namely the number of total strangers every productive worker has to support. And this is what the calculation looks like in graphic form:" Canada is the lowest on the chart! You'll also notice on the end why I believe Germany is correct to cut off Greece without major reforms. The next chart is self explanatory: Maybe Canada would like to take a few of ours off our hands? I applaud the Canadians determination to keep welfare down in the terms presented on the charts, but it's really too much to have certain leftist Canadians criticizing the US over its 'stinginess'. And once again, notice Greece's position. http://www.acting-man.com/?p=39258
those are pretty cool charts, I like dividing between productive and non productive government workers, since we support them all. I wonder where Maryland would come in on a 50 state chart?
"Stinginess in America"... that's a good one. We're giving away soooooo much that we're bankrupting the country.