When Work Is Punished Again: "If You Accept This Raise, You Fall Off The Welfare Cliff"

When Work Is Punished Again: "If You Accept This Raise, You Fall Off The Welfare Cliff" | Zero Hedge:
"Four years ago we first exposed the dismal fact that in the U.S., for the lowest income American Dreamers, work is punished. 
Sadly, the situation has grown worse as buying votes amid a burgeoning welfare state has left millions in the so-called 'low-wage-trap' leaving Americans teetering on the welfare cliff.

The situation can be summed up perfectly, as Foundation for Economic Education's Howard Baetjer explains, "If you accept this raise... you fall off the welfare cliff"...

Pretend you are a poor, single parent of two in Chicago, earning $12 an hour, working full time, and determined to do what is best for your family. And suppose your employer, impressed with your work, offers you training for and promotion to a new job paying $15. Should you take the offer?

It sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s not.

At your present $12 an hour you are eligible for refundable tax credits, food assistance, housing assistance, child care assistance, and medical assistance worth $41,465 combined. Together with your earned income after taxes of $22,121, you are now bringing home to your kids about $63,586 a year.

If you take your employer’s offer, you’ll earn $5,451 more after taxes, $27,572. You will also become eligible for an Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credit. But at that level of earned income all your other benefits would decrease by $8,336, more than your increase in net pay. That means the income you would bring home would decrease from $63,586 to $60,701.
...Here is the chart on which the hypothetical above is based (the particular numbers in our example come from tables in the report, which clarify the visual data in the charts.)

Notice that welfare cliff we considered above, which occurs between $12 an hour and $15 an hour, is relatively small. A bigger one (and the reason I call the report “appalling”) occurs between $15 an hour and $18 an hour..."