Welfare Recipients Receive Tax -Funded Psychic Training
New York City officials have cancelled a controversial welfare-to-work
program that recruited unemployed women for jobs as telephone psychics,
after details of the program leaked out and generated international ridicule.
For nine months, New York City welfare recipients had been hired as
telephone psychics by a company called "Psychic Network." Their job: to
give predictions, advice, and ministering to people calling the company's
psychic telephone hotline.
Calls to the psychic hotline cost $4.99 per minute.
For welfare recipients who weren't psychic, no problem: the Psychic Network
offered job training in Tarot card reading, predicting the future, and
guiding a caller's love life.
It didn't take any mystical abilities for Psychic Network to realize there
was significant money at stake. According to the New York Times, any
business that hires a welfare recipient for at least three months can
qualify for thousands of dollars in wage subsidies and state and federal
tax credits.
Psychic Network was one of 161 businesses participating in the program,
which was set up to connect companies in need of workers with welfare
recipients in need of jobs.
After a report by The New York Times, the city welfare department cancelled
the contract with Psychic Network.
The news service Reuters observed, "They should have seen it coming. "
(Sources: Reuters; New York Times)
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