After CBO Report: The new cultural meme in America. Are we ready for this?

By Angela Graham-West (Wife of Allen West)
The latest economic report from the Congressional Budget Office, released Tuesday, says the health care law will cause Americans to work fewer hours — enough to be the equivalent of 2 million fewer jobs in 2017. The latest number is nearly three times as high as the budget office’s previous prediction. ✧ This was then followed by a nervous rush by the Left to justify the need for “less work”, For “hanging about,” for “discovering our passions,” for smoking a big fat (now legal) joint, and for relying on the sweat of YOUR NEIGHBOR’S BROW and not your own to finance these “internal endeavors.”

Read more at Allen B. West Read More......

Is Walmart rebuilding America?

Former “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe narrates a new Walmart commercial released Thursday and it contains one powerful message: “Work is a beautiful thing.” The commercial ends with a text overlay saying, “Over the next ten years, we’re putting $250 billion to work to help create new manufacturing jobs in America.” Read more at The BLAZE...

Watch Walmart’s other ads and see how the company is committed to American manufacturing jobs.
And then, there's the other side of the Walmart story.

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CATO: 2013 Work Versus Welfare Trade-Off

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In 1995, the Cato Institute published a groundbreaking study, The Work vs. Welfare Trade-Off, which estimated the value of the full package of welfare benefits available to a typical recipient in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It found that not only did the value of such benefits greatly exceed the poverty level but, because welfare benefits are tax-free, their dollar value was greater than the amount of take-home income a worker would receive from an entry-level job.

Since then, many welfare programs have undergone significant change, including the 1996 welfare reform legislation that ended the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program and replaced it with the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. Accordingly, this paper examines the current welfare system in the same manner as the 1995 paper.

Welfare benefits continue to outpace the income that most recipients can expect to earn from an entry-level job, and the balance between welfare and work may actually have grown worse in recent years.

The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work. Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour. If Congress and state legislatures are serious about reducing welfare dependence and rewarding work, they should consider strengthening welfare work requirements, removing exemptions, and narrowing the definition of work. Moreover, states should consider ways to shrink the gap between the value of welfare and work by reducing current benefit levels and tightening eligibility requirements.

Read the Analysis of the Total Level of Welfare Benefits by State (PDF) by Michael Tanner, Senior Fellow, and Charles Hughes, Research Assistant, of the CATO Institute Read More......

Ashton Kutcher's acceptance speech - a word to the youth of America

Ashton Kutcher, who played Steve Jobs in the movie Jobs, gave an acceptance speech at the Teen Choice Awards that is worth watching.  He has a three point message for young people concerning opportunity, being sexy and living life.

(Hat tip: Patriot Update and GenFringe, Conservative Millennials Unhinged)

The message - 1) Opportunity: It looks a lot like work; 2) Being Sexy: The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart, and being thoughtful and being generous; and 3) Living Life: Build a life, don't just live it. Read More......