A 2016 study by the Economic Policy Institute, for instance, found that, once the elderly are excluded, more than 70 percent of all public safety-net beneficiaries — including those who receive Medicaid, food stamps, housing aid and cash assistance — are working families or individuals, not unemployed people. Nearly half the recipients of such benefits work full time. A 2015 study, by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education, found that the United States spends almost $153 billion every year on benefits for workers, most of them employed full time, and that the people who need government aid to survive include employees of large, profitable corporations such as McDonald’s, Walmart and Amazon (Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post). The study found that about half of fast-food workers, child-care workers and home health aides relied on public benefits — as did a quarter of part-time college faculty members. In New Hampshire, Iowa, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Hawaii, Utah and Nebraska, more than 60 percent of all public assistance went to working families, the study found.
In 1968, a full-time worker earning minimum wage could support a family of three, according to an analysis by David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute. Today, such a job is not enough to keep a family of two out of poverty, nor to afford rent on a two-bedroom apartment in any state, county or metropolitan area. Overall, corporations are foisting the burden of supporting workers — regardless of their country of origin — onto taxpayers, and government is acquiescing in that arrangement.