Pierre Bastien

The other day, a conservative-leaning friend of mine took a swipe at “welfare”, implying that large numbers of people are not bothering to work during the recession because they are supported by government welfare.

In my mind I equated welfare with Food Stamps (which has since been renamed to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP). That didn’t seem to be connected to what my friend was talking about — people getting cash and not having to work — so my response in the moment was, “I don’t think that’s what welfare is for.”

Later though, I started to look into what welfare actually means. I tried to look up the government’s definition online, but as far as I can tell, welfare isn’t a defined term in any government literature. There’s no “Welfare” category in the 2012 US Federal Budget.

Yet I do remember Bill Clinton promising to “end welfare as we know it”. It turns out that Clinton did sign a law, in 1996, which established the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Under this program, indigent American families — but only those with children — can receive direct cash assistance from the government until they get a job. While they are looking for a job, they must take job-training courses. Families are limited to a maximum of 5 years’ assistance, replacing earlier programs that had no time limit.

In my home state of Pennsylvania, 220,000 people were receiving TANF payments in December 2011, out of a population of roughly 12,700,000 (from July 2011). So roughly 1.7% of the Pennsylvania population is on welfare.

How large are welfare payments? The best chart I could find is this one (see Appendix 1) from 2010. These are monthly figures. Welfare payments in Pennsylvania were $421 a month for a family of three. That works out to $14 a day. Again this is for a family of three.

A minimum wage job pays about $1,160 per month in Pennsylvania if you’re working full-time. So working minimum wage pays almost 3 times as much as being on welfare.

I’m sure there are some people on welfare who could be working. But at $14 a day, it’s not like they’ve found the secret lane.

Update: Whoa! My late night math skills are seriously deficient. Minimum-wage-per-month figures updated.

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As I mentioned earlier, Steve Pavlina is writing a series of blog posts teaching people how to create streams of passive income, and I am following along. In his recent post he emphasized the importance of committing fully to the goal of creating passive income.

One of his suggestions was to post your goal where you can see it every day. My goal is:

I am now successfully creating a new stream of passive income by September 30, 2012, that generates at least $300 per month on average and endures for a minimum of 10 years, and I’m doing this in a way that delivers strong value for many others around the world.

I just copied Steve’s goal — I liked the wording — but changed the dollar amount. His goal is $2,000 per month. I picked $300 per month. I chose that number because I’m currently earning about $30 a month in passive income from the Google ads I stuck on my BrickBreaker site. I figure 10 times my previous best is a worthwhile goal.

I printed out my goal and left it on my desk next to where my coffee mug goes. That’s guaranteed to get my attention every day.

I’m also posting the goal here on my blog to solidify my commitment a bit more.

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Not too long ago, I rebranded my blog as “The Happy Grownup” and moved it to a new domain. I said at the time that this gave me a new sense of purpose. Well, shortly after moving to the new domain, I stopped writing new material. Oops. So much for a sense of purpose.

One reason I stopped writing new content is I became very involved in another site I publish for squash players. Maybe I had no time / focus left over for The Happy Grownup. Though, that doesn’t seem 100% true, since I’ve continued to post smaller morsels on this pierrebastien.net site in the meantime.

Whatever the real reasons may be, I know I no longer want to have The Happy Grownup as a separate site. If you want to stay subscribed, there’s nothing you need to do — you’ll keep getting the usual updates.

I’ll still be drawing cartoons, but I might also mix in some different types of posts long the way.

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America needs more investment advisors:

The total number of advisers fell to 320,378 in 2010, from 334,919 in 2004 — a 4.3% decline, according to Cerulli.

“You see the continuing graying of the industry,” said Tyler Cloherty, a Cerulli senior analyst. “There’s not a whole lot of new talent coming in on the low end. You’re going to see a shrinking of the advice industry.”

A report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the number of jobs for personal financial advisers is projected to grow by 66,400 by 2020, a 32% increase that is far larger than the 14% average growth rate for all occupations.

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Here’s Lawrence Mishel’s chart of American economic productivity versus hourly compensation for workers:

The above chart shows compensation for nonsupervisory workers, which Mishel says represents more than 80% of American payroll employment.

In short, as economic productivity rose after 1948, compensation for that 80% of American workers grew in tandem. But since 1973, productivity has continued to rise while compensation has stayed flattish.

What’s really going on here? I think it might be clearer if this were presented as a pie chart:

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Facebook just added the ability for you to mark yourself as an organ donor on your timeline. To do this, you go to your Facebook profile (facebook.com/yourusername), click “Life Event”, click “Health & Wellness”, click “Organ Donor”, and fill out the information there.

When you post your organ donor status on Facebook it encourages your Facebook friends to consider becoming donors too. It also tells your family about your intentions.

If you want to legally register as an organ donor, you still have to do that with your state. I did this when I signed up for my Pennsylvania driver’s license. Posting your organ donor status on Facebook is not legally binding.

According to the NY Times:

There are currently 114,000 people waiting for organ transplants, according to the federal government’s Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Most of them — 92,000 — are waiting for kidney transplants, a procedure with a high rate of success.

If you’re on the fence about organ donation, just ask yourself: will you need your organs after you’re dead? If not, consider donating them to someone who could use them.

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Via this profile in the NY Times:

Renny Harlin, the director of “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” told me that the secret to Jackson’s success is simple: “He’s the ultimate pro. He’s on time, knows his lines, hits his mark with no drama. He makes the other actors want to rise to his professional level.”

He also works consistently. He does 4 films a year. Many are duds, many succeed, but he keeps on working.

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Leo at zenhabits lays down some helpful wisdom, as usual:

Last year I wrote 38 Life Lessons I’ve Learned in 38 Years, and people seemed to find some use in it. This year, I thought I’d share an additional lesson I’ve learned:

You’re not missing out.

Our lives are often ruled by the Fear of Missing Out, or FOMO. (Never heard of FOMO? You’re missing out.)

FOMO causes you to check your email too often, to check Facebook and News sites too often. It causes you to overplan, to set too many goals, and to stress out unnecessarily when things don’t go according to plan.

These days, it’s easy to find out what everybody else is doing, which means FOMO must be more of a problem now than at any point in the past.

Fight the power. Resist FOMO.

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