Death Spiral States: 11 States With More People On Welfare Than Employed? Recently, rumors have been circulating that 11 states had reached a point where they had more people living on Welfare than they did employed. While the story seems to be plausible given the state of affairs, it was recently deemed untrue. Rumors originated from an article published in Forbes magazine, which listed eleven states (Alabama, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Main, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, and South Carolina) were in financial death spirals. According to the article, those states were at high risk for fiscal tailspin making them a danger to investors. After being circulated through the internet the problem was simplified to claiming that the states had more welfare recipients that employed persons. Instead, the original article assessed whether states feel under two categories: whether they had more takers than makers and where they ranked on a scorecard of state credit-worthiness. Forbes categorized takers as the number of state and local government works plus the number of people of Medicaid plus 1 for each $100,000 of unfunded pension liabilities. So while takers included those who collect from welfare, the assessment was not based on that number alone. What do you think? Are welfare recipients still contributing to the majority of the problem? 