Work Requirements Don’t Work

Optimist Economy

Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi

Public Policy, Economics, Government, Economy

4.9 • 829 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Here’s what work requirements rarely accomplish: Getting more people to work or lifting them out of poverty. They are, however, very good at driving people off public benefit programs, which was their primary role during the welfare reform of 1996. Yes, Kathryn Edwards economist/human will tell you that in theory, people will optimize how much they work and “consume leisure” according to their preferences, and that if some people get free stuff, they’ll work less and swim at the beach more. But that effect mostly gets swallowed whole by the reality of low-wage work in America.

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0:00.0	I think that maybe one thing that people who have not been around a two-year-old would not understand is just how much they fucking love Band-Aids.
0:07.8	Yes, they do.
0:08.6	It's like, it's, God, they're addicted.
0:17.0	Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Catherine.
0:20.1	Hi, I'm Robin.
0:27.6	On this show, we believe the U.S. economy can be better, and we talk about how to get there one problem and solution at a time.
0:38.7	We start our show off with a very quick announcement that we have a newsletter at optimisteconomy.com.
0:41.0	You can give us money through Buy Me a Coffee.
0:42.5	We love your letters.
0:43.4	We love your supports.
0:44.8	We love your money.
0:48.3	And we'd love for you to become part of the optimist community.
0:52.7	And of course, you can always email optimist.com.
0:58.5	So last week we talked about the national debt, all $36 trillion of it,
1:02.7	and why it shouldn't lead to ulcers or panic attacks.
1:05.8	Do you have any retcons about the national debt?
1:07.5	She's just shaking her head.
1:09.6	I went so heavy on retcon last week.
1:12.4	I made a whole retcon episode and put it into our regular show.
1:13.3	I feel like I'm almost... You did. It was like a 20-minute retcon. It was really long. This is because I just wanted to do retcon con con and you said, no, and then I did it anyway, in a worst way. I don't know if I have any recone or the debt. I was going to try to figure out how much of the debt is owed to me by other Americans,
1:29.5	but I didn't have time to do enough.
1:35.5	All right, terms and conditions.
	...

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