Work

Kentucky is the first state to require Medicaid recipients to work. The plan calls for most Medicaid recipients who are not disabled and aged 19 to 64 to work at least 20 hours a week. There are help wanted signs on many businesses so there are jobs available. In a recent report, President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers said 83 percent of men in the prime working ages of 25-54 who were not in the labor force had not worked in the previous year. So, essentially, 10 million men are missing from the workforce. "One in six prime-age guys has no job; it's kind of worse than it was in the depression in 1940," says Nicholas Eberstadt, an economic and demographic researcher at American Enterprise Institute who wrote the book Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis. He says these men aren't even counted among the jobless, because they aren't seeking work. This would add a half percent to the GDP which would bring it to four percent. If the economy grew at 4% per year, US households would be able to buy and extra $8 trillion worth of goods and services in the next decade. This amounts to over $70,000 per household, or the equivalent of a year’s income for the median household.