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The Road To The Welfare State: Why 50% Of "Exceptional" America Gets Checks From Uncle Sam
Submitted by Nicholas Eberstadt via National Affairs,
If social policy were medicine, and countries were the patients, the United States today would be a post-surgical charge under observation after an ambitious and previously untested transplant operation. Surgeons have grafted a foreign organ?—?the European welfare state?—?into the American body. The transplanted organ has thrived?—?in fact, it has grown immensely. The condition of the patient, however, is another question altogether. The patient's vital signs have not responded entirely positively to this social surgery; in fact, by some important metrics, the patient's post-operative behavior appears to be impaired. And, like many other transplant patients, this one seems to have effected a disturbing change in mood, even personality, as a consequence of the operation.
The modern welfare state has a distinctly European pedigree. Naturally enough, the architecture of the welfare state was designed and developed with European realities in mind, the most important of which were European beliefs about poverty. Thanks to their history of Old World feudalism, with its centuries of rigid class barriers and attendant lack of opportunity for mobility based on merit, Europeans held a powerful, continentally pervasive belief that ordinary people who found themselves in poverty or need were effectively stuck in it?—?and, no less important, that they were stuck through no fault of their own, but rather by an accident of birth. (Whether this belief was entirely accurate is another story, though beside the point: This was what people perceived and believed, and at the end of the day those perceptions shaped the formation and development of Europe's welfare states.) The state provision of old-age pensions, unemployment benefits, and health services?—?along with official family support and other household-income guarantees?—?served a multiplicity of purposes for European political economies, not the least of which was to assuage voters' discontent with the perceived shortcomings of their countries' social structures through a highly visible and explicitly political mechanism for broadly based and compensatory income redistribution.
But America's historical experience has been rather different from Europe's, and from the earliest days of the great American experiment, people in the United States exhibited strikingly different views from their trans-Atlantic cousins on the questions of poverty and social welfare. These differences were noted both by Americans themselves and by foreign visitors, not least among them Alexis de Tocqueville, whose conception of American exceptionalism was heavily influenced by the distinctive American worldview on such matters. Because America had no feudal past and no lingering aristocracy, poverty was not viewed as the result of an unalterable accident of birth but instead as a temporary challenge that could be overcome with determination and character?—?with enterprise, hard work, and grit. Rightly or wrongly, Americans viewed themselves as masters of their own fate, intensely proud because they were self-reliant.
To the American mind, poverty could never be regarded as a permanent condition for anyone in any stratum of society because of the country's boundless possibilities for individual self-advancement. Self-reliance and personal initiative were, in this way of thinking, the critical factors in staying out of need. Generosity, too, was very much a part of that American ethos; the American impulse to lend a hand (sometimes a very generous hand) to neighbors in need of help was ingrained in the immigrant and settler traditions. But thanks to a strong underlying streak of Puritanism, Americans reflexively parsed the needy into two categories: what came to be called the deserving and the undeserving poor. To assist the former, the American prescription was community-based charity from its famously vibrant "voluntary associations." The latter?—?men and women judged responsible for their own dire circumstances due to laziness, or drinking problems, or other behavior associated with flawed character?—?were seen as mainly needing assistance in "changing their ways." In either case, charitable aid was typically envisioned as a temporary intervention to help good people get through a bad spell and back on their feet. Long-term dependence upon handouts was "pauperism," an odious condition no self-respecting American would readily accept.
The American mythos, in short, offered less than fertile soil for cultivating a modern welfare state. This is not to say that the American myth of unlimited opportunity for the rugged individualist always conformed to the facts on the ground. That myth rang hollow for many Americans?—?most especially for African-Americans, who first suffered for generations under slavery and thereafter endured a full century of officially enforced discrimination, as well as other barriers to self-advancement. Though the facts certainly did not always fit the ideal, the American myth was so generally accepted that the nation displayed an enduring aversion to all the trappings of the welfare state, and put up prolonged resistance to their establishment on our shores.
Over the past several decades, however, something fundamental has changed. The American welfare state today transfers over 14% of the nation's GDP to the recipients of its many programs, and over a third of the population now accepts "need-based" benefits from the government. This is not the America that Tocqueville encountered. To begin to appreciate the differences, we need to understand how Americans' relationship to the welfare state has changed, and with it, the American character itself.
AN AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The road to our modern welfare state traces its way through northern Europe, most notably through Bismarck's social-insurance legislation in late 19th-century Germany, Sweden's pioneering "social democracy" policies during the interwar period, and Britain's 1942 "Beveridge Report," which offered the embattled nation a vision of far-reaching and generous social-welfare guarantees after victory.
Over the first three decades of the 20th century, while welfare programs were blossoming in Europe, in the United States the share of the national output devoted to public-welfare spending (pensions, unemployment, health, and all the rest) not only failed to rise but apparently declined. The ratio of government social outlays to GDP looks actually to have been lower in 1930 than it was in 1890, due in part to the death of Civil War veterans (of the Union army) and their dependents who had been receiving pensions. Thirty-six European and Latin American countries?—?many of which lagged far behind the U.S. in terms of educational attainment and socioeconomic development?—?already had put in place nationwide "social insurance" systems for old-age pensions by the time the United States passed the Social Security Act in 1935, establishing our first federal legislation committing Washington to providing public benefits for the general population.
Suffice it to say, the United States arrived late to the 20th century's entitlement party, and the hesitance to embrace the welfare state lingered on well after the Depression. As recently as the early 1960s, the "footprint" left on America's GDP by the welfare state was not dramatically larger than it had been under Franklin Roosevelt?—?or Herbert Hoover, for that matter. In 1961, at the start of the Kennedy Administration, total government entitlement transfers to individual recipients accounted for a little less than 5% of GDP, as opposed to 2.5% of GDP in 1931 just before the New Deal. In 1963?—?the year of Kennedy's assassination?—?these entitlement transfers accounted for about 6% of total personal income in America, as against a bit less than 4% in 1936.
During the 1960s, however, America's traditional aversion to the welfare state and all its works largely collapsed. President Johnson's "War on Poverty" (declared in 1964) and his "Great Society" pledge of the same year ushered in a new era for America, in which Washington finally commenced in earnest the construction of a massive welfare state. In the decades that followed, America not only markedly expanded provision for current or past workers who qualified for benefits under existing "social insurance" arrangements (retirement, unemployment, and disability), it also inaugurated a panoply of nationwide programs for "income maintenance" (food stamps, housing subsidies, Supplemental Social Security Insurance, and the like) where eligibility turned not on work history but on officially designated "poverty" status. The government also added health-care guarantees for retirees and the officially poor, with Medicare, Medicaid, and their accompaniments. In other words, Americans could claim, and obtain, an increasing trove of economic benefits from the government simply by dint of being a citizen; they were now incontestably entitled under law to some measure of transferred public bounty, thanks to our new "entitlement state."
The expansion of the American welfare state remains very much a work in progress; the latest addition to that edifice is, of course, the Affordable Care Act. Despite its recent decades of rapid growth, the American welfare state may still look modest in scope and scale compared to some of its European counterparts. Nonetheless, over the past two generations, the remarkable growth of the entitlement state has radically transformed both the American government and the American way of life itself. It is not too much to call those changes revolutionary.
The impact on the federal government has been revolutionary in the literal meaning of the term, in that the structure of state spending has been completely overturned within living memory. Over the past half-century, social-welfare-program payments and subventions have mutated from a familiar but nonetheless decidedly limited item on the federal ledger into its dominant and indeed most distinguishing feature. The metamorphosis is underscored by estimates from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the unit in the federal government that calculates GDP and other elements of our national accounts. According to BEA figures, official transfers of money, goods, and services to individual recipients through social-welfare programs accounted for less than one federal dollar in four (24%) in 1963. (And, to go by BEA data, that share was not much higher than what it had been in 1929.) But by 2013, roughly three out of every five federal dollars (59%) were going to social-entitlement transfers. The still-shrinking residual?—?barely two budgetary dollars in five, at this writing?—?is now left to apply to all the remaining purposes of the federal government, including the considerable bureaucratic costs of overseeing the various transfer programs under consideration themselves.
Thus did the great experiment begun in the Constitution devolve into an entitlements machine?—?at least, so far as daily operations, budgetary priorities, and administrative emphases are concerned. Federal politics, correspondingly, are now in the main the politics of entitlement programs?—?activities never mentioned in the Constitution or its amendments.
THE ROAD TO WELFARE
Scarcely less revolutionary has been the remolding of daily life for ordinary Americans under the shadow of the entitlement state. Over the half-century between 1963 and 2013, entitlement transfers were the fastest growing source of personal income in America?—?expanding at twice the rate for real per capita personal income from all other sources, in fact. Relentless, exponential growth of entitlement payments recast the American family budget over the course of just two generations. In 1963, these transfers accounted for less than one out of every 15 dollars of overall personal income; by 2013, they accounted for more than one dollar out of every six.
The explosive growth of entitlement outlays, of course, was accompanied by a corresponding surge in the number of Americans who would routinely apply for, and accept, such government benefits. Despite episodic attempts to limit the growth of the welfare state or occasional assurances from Washington that "the era of big government is over," the pool of entitlement beneficiaries has apparently grown almost ceaselessly. The qualifier "apparently" is necessary because, curiously enough, the government did not actually begin systematically tracking the demographics of America's "program participation" until a generation ago. Such data as are available, however, depict a sea change over the past 30 years.
By 2012, the most recent year for such figures at this writing, Census Bureau estimates indicated that more than 150 million Americans, or a little more than 49% of the population, lived in households that received at least one entitlement benefit. Since under-reporting of government transfers is characteristic for survey respondents, and since administrative records suggest the Census Bureau's own adjustments and corrections do not completely compensate for the under-reporting problem, this likely means that America has already passed the symbolic threshold where a majority of the population is asking for, and accepting, welfare-state transfers.
Between 1983 and 2012, by Census Bureau estimates, the percentage of Americans "participating" in entitlement programs jumped by nearly 20 percentage points. One might at first assume that the upsurge was largely due to the graying of the population and the consequent increase in the number of beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare, entitlement programs designed to help the elderly. But that is not the case. Over the period in question, the share of Americans receiving Social Security payments increased by less than three percentage points?—?and by less than four points for those availing themselves of Medicare. Less than one-fifth of that 20-percentage-point jump can be attributed to increased reliance on these two "old age" programs.
Overwhelmingly, the growth in claimants of entitlement benefits has stemmed from an extraordinary rise in "means-tested" entitlements. (These entitlements are often called "anti-poverty programs," since the criterion for eligibility is an income below some designated multiple of the officially calculated poverty threshold.) By late 2012, more than 109 million Americans lived in households that obtained one or more such benefits?—?over twice as many as received Social Security or Medicare. The population of what we might call "means-tested America" was more than two-and-a-half times as large in 2012 as it had been in 1983. Over those intervening years, there was population growth to be sure, but not enough to explain the huge increase in the share of the population receiving anti-poverty benefits. The total U.S. population grew by almost 83 million, while the number of people accepting means-tested benefits rose by 67 million?—?an astonishing trajectory, implying a growth of the means-tested population of 80 persons for each 100-person increase in national population over that interval.
In the mid-1990s, during the Clinton era, Congress famously passed legislation to rein in one notorious entitlement program: Aid for Families with Dependent Children. Established under a different name as part of the 1935 Social Security Act, AFDC was a Social Security program portal originally intended to support the orphaned children of deceased workers; it was subsequently diverted to supporting children from broken homes and eventually the children of unwed mothers. By the 1980s, the great majority of children born to never-married mothers were AFDC recipients, and almost half of AFDC recipients were the children of never-married mothers. The program's design seemed to create incentives against marriage and against work, and it was ultimately determined by bipartisan political consensus that such an arrangement must not continue. So with the welfare reforms of the 1990s, AFDC was changed to TANF?—?Temporary Aid to Needy Families?—?and eligibility for benefits was indeed restricted. By 2012, the fraction of Americans in homes obtaining AFDC/TANF aid was less than half of what it had been in 1983.
The story of AFDC/TANF, however, is a one-off, a major exception to the general trend. Over the same three decades, the rolls of claimants receiving food stamps (a program that was officially rebranded the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in 2008 because of the stigma the phrase had acquired) jumped from 19 million to 51 million. By 2012 almost one American in six lived in a home enrolled in the SNAP program. The ranks of Medicaid, the means-tested national health-care program, increased by over 65 million between 1983 and 2012, and now include over one in four Americans. And while the door to means-tested cash benefits from the Social Security program through AFDC/TANF had been partly (though not entirely) closed, a much larger window for such benefits was simultaneously thrown open in the form of Supplemental Security Income, a program intended to provide income for the disabled poor. Between 1983 and 2012, the number of Americans in households receiving Federal SSI more than sextupled; by 2012, over 20 million people were counted as dependents of the program.
All told, more than 35% of Americans were taking home at least some benefits from means-tested programs by 2012?—?nearly twice the share in 1983. Some may be tempted to blame such an increase on increasingly widespread material hardship. It is true that the American economy in 2012 was still recovering from the huge global crash of 2008, and unemployment levels were still painfully high: 8.1% for the year as a whole. But 1983 was a recovery year for the U.S. economy, too; the recession of 1981 and 1982 was the most severe in postwar American history up to that point, and the unemployment rate in 1983 was 9.6%, even higher than in 2012.
By the same token, although the official poverty rate was almost identical for the two years?—?the total population estimated to be below the official poverty line was 15.2% in 1983 and 15.0% in 2012?—?the proportion of Americans drawing means-tested benefits was dramatically higher in 2012. By 2012, there was no longer any readily observable correspondence between the officially designated condition of poverty and the recipience of "anti-poverty" entitlements. In that year, the number of people taking home means-tested benefits was more than twice the number of those living below the poverty line?—?meaning a decisive majority of recipients of such aid were the non-poor. In fact, by 2012 roughly one in four Americans above the poverty line was receiving at least one means-tested benefit.
How could this be? America today is almost certainly the richest society in history, anywhere at any time. And it is certainly more prosperous and productive now (and in 2012) than it was three decades ago. Yet paradoxically, our entitlement state behaves as if Americans have never been more "needy." The paradox is easily explained: Means-tested entitlement transfers are no longer an instrument strictly for addressing absolute poverty, but instead a device for a more general redistribution of resources. And the fact that so many are willing to accept need-based aid signals a fundamental change in the American character.
THE MORAL FABRIC
Asking for, and accepting, purportedly need-based government welfare benefits has become a fact of life for a significant and still growing minority of our population: Every decade, a higher proportion of Americans appear to be habituated to the practice. If the trajectory continues, the coming generation could see the emergence in the United States of means-tested beneficiaries becoming the majority of the population. This notion may seem absurd, but it is not as fanciful as it sounds. In recent years, after all, nearly half of all children under 18 years of age received means-tested benefits (or lived in homes that did). For this rising cohort of young Americans, reliance on public, need-based entitlement programs is already the norm?—?here and now.
It risks belaboring the obvious to observe that today's real existing American entitlement state, and the habits?—?including habits of mind?—?that it engenders, do not coexist easily with the values and principles, or with the traditions, culture, and styles of life, subsumed under the shorthand of "American exceptionalism." Especially subversive of that ethos, we might argue, are essentially unconditional and indefinite guarantees of means-tested public largesse.
Some components of the welfare state look distinctly less objectionable to that traditional sensibility than others. Given proper design, for example, an old-age benefit programs such as Social Security could more or less function as the social-insurance program it claims to be. With the right structure and internal incentives, it is possible to imagine a publicly administered retirement program entirely self-financed by the eventual recipients of these benefits over the course of their working lives. The United States is very far from achieving a self-funded Social Security program, of course, but if such a schema could be put in place, it would not in itself do violence to the conceptions of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and self-advancement that sit at the heart of the traditional American mythos. (Much the same could likewise be said of publicly funded education.) Moral hazard is inherent, and inescapable, in all public social-welfare projects?—?but it is easiest to minimize or contain in efforts like these. By contrast, the moral hazard in ostensibly need-based programs is epidemic, contagious, and essentially uncontrollable. Mass public provision of means-tested entitlements perforce invites long-term consumption of those entitlements.
The corrosive nature of mass dependence on entitlements is evident from the nature of the pathologies so closely associated with its spread. Two of the most pernicious of them are so tightly intertwined as to be inseparable: the breakdown of the pre-existing American family structure and the dramatic decrease in participation in work among working-age men.
When the "War on Poverty" was launched in 1964, 7% of children were born outside of marriage; by 2012, that number had grown to an astounding 41%, and nearly a quarter of all American children under the age of 18 were living with a single mother. (In the interest of brevity, let us merely say much, much more data could be adduced on this score, almost all of it depressing.)
As for men of parenting age, a steadily rising share has been opting out of the labor force altogether. Between 1964 and early 2014, the fraction of civilian men between the ages of 25 and 34 who were neither working nor looking for work roughly quadrupled, from less than 3% to more than 11%. In 1965, fewer than 5% of American men between 45 and 54 years of age were totally out of the work force; by early 2014, the fraction was almost 15%. To judge by mortality statistics, American men in the prime of life have never been healthier than they are today?—?yet they are less committed to working, or to attempting to find work, than at any previous point in our nation's history.
No one can prove (or disprove) that the entitlement state is responsible for this rending of the national fabric. But it is clear that the rise of the entitlement state has coincided with these disheartening developments; that it has abetted these developments; and that, at the end of the day, its interventions have served to finance and underwrite these developments. For a great many women and children in America, and a perhaps surprisingly large number of working-age men as well, the entitlement state is now the breadwinner of the household.
ENTITLEMENTS AND EXCEPTIONALISM
Changes in popular mores and norms are less easily and precisely tracked than changes in behavior, but here as well modern America has witnessed immense shifts under the shadow of the entitlement state. Difficult as these shifts may be to quantify, we may nevertheless dare to identify, and at least impressionistically describe, some of the ways the entitlements revolution may be shaping the contemporary American mind and fundamentally changing the American character.
To begin, the rise of long-term entitlement dependence?—?with the concomitant "mainstreaming" of inter-generational welfare de-pendence?—?self-evidently delivers a heavy blow against general belief in the notion that everyone can succeed in America, no matter their station at birth. Perhaps less obvious is what increasing acceptance of entitlements means for American exceptionalism. The burning personal ambition and hunger for success that both domestic and foreign observers have long taken to be distinctively American traits are being undermined and supplanted by the character challenges posed by the entitlement state. The incentive structure of our means-based welfare state invites citizens to accept benefits by showing need, making the criterion for receiving grants demonstrated personal or familial financial failure, which used to be a source of shame.
Unlike all American governance before it, our new means-tested arrangements enforce a poverty policy that must function as blind to any broad differentiation between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor. That basic Puritan conception is dying today in America, except perhaps in the circles and reaches where it was already dead. More broadly, the politics surrounding the entitlement system tends to undermine?—?by and large deliberately?—?the legitimacy of utilizing stigma and opprobrium to condition the behavior of beneficiaries, even when the behavior in question is irresponsible or plainly destructive. For a growing number of Americans, especially younger Americans, the very notion of "shaming" entitlement recipients for their personal behavior is regarded as completely inappropriate, if not offensive. This is a strikingly new point of view in American political culture. A "judgment-free" attitude toward the official provision of social support, one that takes personal responsibility out of the discussion, marks a fundamental break with the past on this basic American precept about civic life and civic duty.
The entitlement state appears to be degrading standards of citizenship in other ways as well. For example, mass gaming of the welfare system appears to be a fact of modern American life. The country's ballooning "disability" claims attest to this. Disability awards are a key source of financial support for non-working men now, and disability judgments also serve as a gateway to qualifying for a whole assortment of subsidiary welfare benefits. Successful claims by working-age adults against the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program rose almost six-fold between 1970 and 2012?—?and that number does not include claims against other major government disability programs, such as SSI. There has never been a serious official effort to audit SSDI?—?or, for that matter, virtually any of the country's current entitlement programs.
The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once wrote, "It cannot too often be stated that the issue of welfare is not what it costs those who provide it, but what it costs those who receive it." The full tally of those costs must now include the loss of public honesty occasioned by chronic deception to extract unwarranted entitlement benefits from our government?—?and by the tolerance of such deception by the family members and friends of those who commit it.
Finally, there is the relation between entitlements and the middle-class mentality. An important aspect of the American national myth is that anyone who works hard and plays by the rules can gain entry to the country's middle class, regardless of their income or background. Yet while low incomes, limited educational attainment, and other material constraints manifestly have not prevented successive generations of Americans from aspiring to the middle-class or even entering it, the same cannot be said of constraints emanating from the mind. Being part of the American middle class is not just an income distinction?—?it is a mentality, a self-conception. To be middle class is to be hard-working and self-sufficient, with self-respect rooted in providing a good life for oneself and one's family. Can members in good standing of the American middle class really maintain that self-conception while simultaneously taking need-based government benefits that symbolically brand them and their family as wards of the state?
It is no secret that the American middle class is under great pressure these days. Most commentary and analysis on this question has focused on "structural," material reasons for this phenomenon: globalization, the faltering American jobs machine, widening economic differences in society, difficulties in keeping up the pace of mobility, and many others. Conspicuously absent from this discussion have been the consequences of enrolling a sizable and still-growing share of the populace in welfare programs intended for the helpless and needy. With more than 35% of America receiving means-tested benefits, should it really be surprising that over a third of the country no longer considers itself "middle class"?
THE END OF EXCEPTIONALISM
The worldwide spread and growth of the social-welfare state seems strongly to suggest that there is a universal demand today for such services and guarantees in affluent, democratic societies. Given the disproportionate growth almost everywhere of entitlements in relation to increases in national income, it would seem that voters in modern democracies the world over regard such benefits as "luxury goods." In one sense, we might therefore say there is nothing particularly special about the recent American experience with the entitlement state. But as we have also seen, there is good reason to think that the entitlement state may be especially poorly suited for a nation with America's particular political culture, sensibilities, and tradition.
The qualities celebrated under the banner of "American exceptionalism" are perhaps in poorer repair than at any time in our nation's history. There can be little doubt (to return to our medical metaphor) that the grafting of a social-welfare system onto our body public is in no small part responsible for this state of affairs.
And there is little reason to believe that the transplant will be rejected any time soon. To date the American voter's appetite for entitlement transfers appears to be scarcely less insatiable than those of voters anywhere else. Our political leadership, for its part, has no stomach for taking the lead in weaning the nation from entitlement dependence. Despite tactical, rhetorical opposition to further expansion of the entitlement state by many voices in Washington, and firm resistance by an honorable and principled few, collusive bipartisan support for an ever-larger welfare state is the central fact of politics in our nation's capital today, as it has been for decades.
Until and unless America undergoes some sort of awakening that turns the public against its blandishments, or some sort of forcing financial crisis that suddenly restricts the resources available to it, continued growth of the entitlement state looks very likely in the years immediately ahead. And in at least that respect, America today does not look exceptional at all.
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American exceptionalism. Ha. Most Americans don't even know what the Fed is. Precisely because most everyone, especially the poor, are content. Or at least not hungry. The middle class, or what is left of it, is on the hamster wheel. The poor gave up a long time ago and are happy to collect their benefits. The upper middle class is falsely secure in its knowledge that it is superior. The .1% own the place. If it were not for welfare, there would be another revolution. It is that simple. They will stop welfare checks when they have the police state fully in place.
Food stamps are the new bread lines...
After the FED stole all of the interest income on my savings, don't put a guilt trip on me for keeping the taxes I would have paid plus any benies I can muster out of their hides.
This is why the US has the largest consumer base in the world.
This secret shall soon be copied by the rising East to create the replacement of the US consumer base.
The Crisis of 2020, here we come.
ROGULSKI: Why are you here?
WOMAN #1: To get some money.
ROGULSKI: What kind of money?
WOMAN #1: Obama money.
ROGULSKI: Where's it coming from?
WOMAN #1: Obama.
ROGULSKI: And where did Obama get it?
WOMAN #1: I don't know, his stash. I don't know. (laughter) I don't know where he got it from, but he givin' it to us, to help us.
WOMAN #2: And we love him.
WOMAN #1: We love him. That's why we voted for him!
WOMEN: (chanting) Obama! Obama! Obama! (laughing)
We Cloward-Pivened some folks
I was watching a "reality" TV show yesterday and it occurred to me that the worst part of 50% collecting checks mean that the 20% are likely the only ones employed. This means those with talent and skill are stuck in jobs which deaden their possiblities and the possible growth of the nation. While the losers on checks, who don't produce anything get to enjoy the day being obnoxious aholes while those who might be able to breath life into this declining nation need to support the other 80%.
Same here. I was forced to convert most of our savings into gold, silver, lead, and lead delivery systems. In the meantime I will gladly accept my ss and my govt pension.
You have reached what I call the "Chump Factor"
You have decided that the system is rigged and you refuse to be a chump by continuing to play by the rules established by our forefathers
I fear that when the majority reaches your conclusion this house of cards crashes and burns.
"I'll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 100 years!" -- Lyndon Baines Johnson
And it's a shame that the DemoCrap Party and self-serving black leaders have used blacks for the last 50 years to get re-elected by keeping them in a continuous have-not victim status....
Fortunately, some blacks have wised up & prospered, but DemoCraps and black leaders rail against "thinking for yourself" and call these free-thinking blacks, Uncle Toms! Shame!
The whole thing is a welfare state.
Welfare for insurance companies, doctors, energy companies, Banks, Wall Street....what the heck, throw a bone or two to da po folk.
I mean the shocking lack of Americans just not working is truly a catastrophic failure of the polity.
Dependence is slavery.
"The whole thing is a welfare state." That is what I just explained to my lady. I sat her down and read LTER's comment sentence by sentence to her, despite the down votes. At least she knows what the Fed is after listening to me for six years or so.
Everything from the upper middle class to the poor is on welfare, bitchez.
The .1% would be fucked if they didn't have the fire power or the resources they do now and if people were not so easily brainwashed.
Let the show continue.
don't forget the dirty white boy republican welfare snobs:farmer and ranchers.
big fat straw sucking off fiat...
I do notice the purple Escalade number has markedly increased since about 2001 and really took off after Barry was elected. Oddly, they tend to be densely parked in the Walmart handicap parking slots and rolll out of their Caddy SUV. I can't imagine what disability these foilks could have ...and I mean physical disability that would entitle them to take a slot reserved for a truly disabled victim.
I suspect Hillary is already mobilizing her two main groups of supporters: the FSA at the lower end, and the MIC at the upper end. I have seen no sign from her that she gives a hoot about the private sector Middle Class.
My only hope is the republican run a very strong candidate who sincerely cares about all Americans and not a handful of speical interest groups here [like bankers] or there [like parasitic gubmint employees] or over there [the self proclaimed fsa].
"My only hope is the republican run a very strong candidate who sincerely cares about all Americans and not a handful of speical interest groups here [like bankers] or there [like parasitic gubmint employees] or over there [the self proclaimed fsa]."
I started laughing when I read this first sentence. No offense, but you essentially have no hope if a Republican who is not out to loot the country for himself is your only hope.
Sure you want to stick by that? There are plenty of Dems that work the land or are heavily vested in such, not saying it's 50/50 but just saying.
And yes, it's a big fucking straw.
Life lesson the other day for our oldest who is just in HS. While we are not in the poor house by any means, he has several good peeps that live on large farms. They drive pickups like Tundra's and Ford 3/4 ton Powerstrokes to school...........these are nice vehicles. They have snowmobiles, lake homes.....they go on trips. Yes he gets invited along since he is a well liked and mannered kid, but it still strikes a bit of a nerve when he is stuck working all day Saturday hauling shit(which he loves to do, he is a farmer at heart) just to save for something older when he turns sixteen.
I have often told him about the payments farmers get, or many get, each year from uncle sugar. The other day I decided to show him a website that shows this, and even I was a bit shocked at the amounts these guys are pulling in. I know these guys well, but of course it's never discussed in circles. I then said "Son, you see now why they can afford so many nice things?" He is starting to get it, and the wheels are starting to turn at his very impressionable young age.
You must have missed the memo
Last year the new farm bill reduced all direct payments to farmers and ranchers to effectively 0
There are only 1 million farmers left and they don't contribute money in the millions to politicians... So they lose out out on the goodies
Socialism at its best!
We lost EVERYTHING at Gettysburg.
They moved the bread lines from outside to inside of Walmart.
"We Walmarted some bread lines"
Walmart is a perfect example of where American went wrong.
Sam Walton was a visionary, and built a brilliant model.
He died, and left all of his money to his kids and their wives, who simply buy politicians and build nothing.
The store he left behind is outsourced for short-term profit for the executives who run it, and local employees are encouraged to enroll in government programs to subsidize their income.
The store, because it outsources its products and subsidizes local wages (via the buying of politicians referenced above), puts small business competitors out of business. Not because it builds a better mousetrap, but because it can.
+1 Rand
do u still go there?
Walmart people:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?467055-RIP-Martin-Luther-Kin...
Amazing how much the rise of the welfare state correlates with the final years of the gold standard and our bankruptcy in 1971.
From that point on, wages never kept up with inflation and you started needing two jobs in a household just to get by, so it must have been a lot easier to sell these plans to the plebes who were slowly drowning in a deluge of unbacked currency.
welfare, corporate or otherwise, is a symptom of debt-money, when the collapse happens, there will be no police state......
bravo right on
Good on you Rand, That is the first time you acknowledged reality. +1
I agree. The only reason US has any ’welfare’ for the poor is to keep them from revolting. The article above only scratch the surface of the functioning of a fascist state like US. A more honest article would mention the biggest welfare-recipient: the corporate sector and the military industrial complex. The welfare for the poor is peanuts in relation to the amounts given to the financial sector and are more than miniscule compared to the (state sponsored) budget for the military/police state.
+ welfare and especially food-stamps is an indirect corporate aid. It has created a whole class of ‘working poor’ – people that in a honest economy would make a living wage are made dependent on the state (even though many have two jobs, they still need food stamps). + the whole privatized welfare sector of US is itself one more pyramid scheme/Ponzi scheme (together with the privatized prison system, the insurance sector/”healthcare” and educational system). Much of the “welfare” is direct or indirect aid to the corporate sector.
I’m convinced that ALL policies implemented by the US is in the interest of the owners of the state (the 0,1 %) – you just have to dig deep enough in your analysis.
correct it is all graft to friends, kickbackers, and family. deals for extreme profit or unneeded stuffs or services.67 cents on a dollar is wasted money taking from productive people. theft and transfer to all types of nigger-white to black...
social security, disability, aha, medicaid, medicare, list goes on and on. print moar welfare...
til the dolla dies...
So both partys are the same, but only one believes in buying votes from ticks and leeches with never ending handouts?
Gotcha!
Both parties may serve the same masters, but it's idiotic to say both partys are the same.
"A more honest article would mention the biggest welfare-recipient..the owners of the state (the 0,1 %)"
Nicely identifies the biggest parasites in the system. As previously posted:
"..the real reason why our nations are all insolvent, in the first place, and about to go bankrupt: because of taxation inequality. The Misers at the top, the fraction of the Top-1% who hoard most of our wealth refuse to pay taxes on their gigantic hoards.
The “tax base” across the Western world has collapsed, as those on the bottom have nothing left to tax, while those at the top (hoarding all the wealth) are taxed at the lowest rates in history. This has resulted in what I previously described (and documented) as “the Great Western Revenue Crisis”. In real dollars; spending is flat, but tax receipts have collapsed.
This is another reason why lying about inflation is so important to the Oligarchs. By pretending that inflation is only a tiny fraction of its actual level, they can skew the numbers, making spending appear to be rising, and revenues appear to be (at least somewhat stable). But the two charts below completely debunk that fiction."
IMF: Wealth Inequality Harms EconomiesSo they skim when money is created, get first use - both because they control banking AND the income tax system funnels all wealth to them. The economy is being sucked dry by these "vampires", maybe a just reward would be a "stake" dinner?
A lot of those poor are armed.
An additional reason, other than theft, for welfare, is to keep those people from becoming pissed.
Armed, pissed, poor people end tyrants.
The banksters need to repay us.
I will bring the who.
Unfortunately they may be successful in the revolution, but it will quickly devolve into 'now what do we do with it'.
My best crystal ball wild ass guess is that the second american revolution will follow the French/Middle Eastern/ Far Eastern model and end up with bloody purges of anybody with any nation building ability, evolving into tribal warfare, morphing into a military junta government, lead by a colonel that wasn't politically savvy enough to earn his star.
I picture it as a balkanization simiilar to that which happened in the former Soviet Union...run by organized crime syndicates in a smaller scale than the one we have now.
Yes, very viable. I shudder to think of the Marshal Tito Yugoslavia model or the Saddam Hussein model of revolution results. Countries held together by a thin thread , untill they were not.
This little problem is just about to come to an end all by itself. Prolly in about 5 years or so-the end of the next president's term. By that point we'll need to be buying oil from the Russians and Saudi's with gold
Rough language but she really makes her point clear!
I don't think pissed really covers it!!!!!!!!!!!
Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming , Co-Chair of Obama's deficit commission, calls senior citizens the Greediest Generation as he compared "Social Security" to a Milk Cow with 310 million teats.
Here's a response in a letter from PATTY MYERS in Montana
... I think she is a little ticked off! She also tells it like it is!
"Hey Alan, let's get a few things straight.
1. As a career politician, you have been on the public dole for FIFTY YEARS.
2. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15 years old. I am now 63).
3 My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff proud..
4. Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you and your ilk pulled the proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing retirement and moved the goalposts for full retirement from age 65 to age 67. NOW, you and your shill commission is proposing to move the goalposts YET AGAIN.
5. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from Day One, and now you morons propose to change the rules of the game. Why? Because you idiots mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an extent that you need to steal money from Medicare to pay the bills.
6. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying income taxes our entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again. Why? Because you incompetent bastards spent our money so profligately that you just kept on spending even after you ran out of money.
Now, you come to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay off YOUR debt.
To add insult to injury, you label us "greedy" for calling "bullshit" on your incompetence.
Well, Captain Bullshit, I have a few questions for YOU.
1. How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during your pathetic 50-year political career?
2. At what age did you retire from your pathetic political career, and how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the American taxpayers?
3. How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance?
4. What cuts in YOUR retirement and healthcare benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or, as usual, have you exempted yourself and your political cronies?
It is you, Captain Bullshit, and your political co-conspirators called Congress who are the "greedy" ones. It is you and your fellow nutcases who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream from millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers. And for what? Votes. That's right, sir. You and yours have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of advancing your pathetic political careers. You know it, we know it, and you know that we know it.
And you can take that to the bank, you miserable son of a bitch.
Free-shit Army, Bitchez!
CLOWN BOY - is the "free shit" army include:
Scumbag banksters who get free money from the Fed for years AND get bailed out from Bankruptcy AND get a get out of jail card FREE ????
MIC who get F-35 for Trillion's $$$ for a piece of shit - or endless war for blowing up the world for nothing ??????
Pharma - who get rigged prices for Meds higher than the rest of the world????
NO anti trust enforcement to create monopolies and corners of every description ????
what the fuck are you tallking about???
stealing is a way of life in the US of A
Shaniqua, and Mary Sue, each on welfare, 4 kids each, and a substance abuse issue, or two, are still less of a burden on society than Jon Corzine's. $1,000,000,000 plus theft from his customer's accounts.
And Shaniqua, and Mary Sue, are hounded day in and day out by the banksters' local revenuers, the gun and badge thugs, while Corzine is accorded to live above such travails as he travels, and sleeps, the globe.
The banksters need to repay us.
"I'm Jon Corzine, and I earned everything I stole."
Yeah, wee-weed up. Only, no free shit army = no consumption. What's left of America's real economy goes down the drain.
Why don't you and your ilk go buy yourselves a brain?
A Government subsidized economy is not a real economy.
Consumption is the antithesis of production. When production exceeds consumption then true economic growth is REALized.
Conversely when consumption exceeds that of production for an extended time then economic collapse and subsequent bankruptcy is ensured. One cannot live beyonf their means. That is as true for Governments as it is for people. Impoverishment is the end result of such folly
There is no real economy, not even the shreds of one, within the borders of the United States.
Why do you persist upon living in a fantasy? Fantasyland is just a suburb of Disneyland, otherwise known as jail.
When you choose to live in a fantasy you choose to live as a prisoner of your own mind. Get out of jail now. Free your mind and embrace the dismal reality and celebrate it as the ugly truth that it is.
That is far much better than living in a lie.
A "real economy" requires the freedoms the 0.1% have been stripping from us to prevent reclamation of the assets stripped from Americans the last 100 years by the CB's using the annaul IRS tax filings to aim their efforts
What a weak conclusion to draw.
The logical conclusion is that statism never works to the benefit of the governed, and thus a market system must always prevail
we are so rich and so exceptional that we can afford to give our jobs to 3rd world communist countries......
thanks debt-money....your mission has been fullfilled
Funny but I thought the point of free market capitalism was to strive for the lowest overall cost of production?
Your point?
We could say we have social market economy like Germany since we have expensive social programs & welfare. The experts say they try to tweek the system to make jobs stay at a high level.
- But if we outsource & Off Shore to slave labor, we reach a point where our Economy contracts due to curtailed consumption... which seems like the story after 2008-2014
- At the same time our industry tries to sell real estate, equity, bonds, businesses, weapons, military training, high technology, property rights ... to foreign countries and agents
- The cost of Cheap Credit seems to be on the back end
So maybe he was saying above in thread that production costs due to Free Trade, outsourcing, cheap Credit, job losses, and and lower consumption... will come in the form of Inflation & lower availability of goods & services in the future... as well as higher production costs due to loss of skilled industry, Property rights, Copy Rights, and Brain Drain from US Industry
I mean... I just can't believe otherwise intelligent people don't see though this fucking Potemkin rhetoric from an eloquent puppet.
The air gets rarefied up here near the handle of the hockey stick. We pray only that the game goes on and the A/C don't break.
The $16 trillion that the FED created in a few weeks in 2008 was enough to pay every US citizen $50,000. Instead, that went to the banks.
Finance went from about 10% of the economy to 30%. Maintaining that higher % means tens of thousands of unneeded bank employees who are now just another cadre of government welfare queens.
Keeping what is a UTILITY propped up on the backs of savers is effectively welfare to the employees of these unneeded and FAILED entities.
Put that in your pipes and smoke it.
Speaking of smoking it, we Coloradans are keeping the oil in the ground and the icky in the air to the tune of tax heaven. We expect to soon receive rebates like Kuwaitis who sit on black wells.
Move to a right state. It's a whole different atmosphere, brother,
What oil? You mean oil shale? The stuff that no oil company can turn ito oil for a profit even with practically free natural gas inputs PLUS government subsidies?
No, I mean oil. You know, oil-oil. Property all around my acreage has wells. You know, for oil? (We have oil and gas. Also shale, but that's shale.)
I'm asking you guys because I know I can trust you. No metaphors:
I once taught a ESL class. One day my attendance was very poor so I asked my Costa Rican student why and he said "nobody pays for it."
Now, I have eggs that I sell for premium price yet I feel I should reach out to foodstampers in their time of need for free.
What is this I'm experiencing?
I knew a crazy bunch of healers who would take courses of all kinds, Massage, Reflexology, Cranial Sacral, Energy Work, Meditation classes, everything.
You never give away your work. You show respect for your teachers and the lineage and for yourself and your family.
- The answer is that Massage Therapists will trade with others so that they can get massages too. Then I've also seen people work for donations.
So give your eggs away, but ask for friendship, donation, or thanks in return, ask them to remember you. If you teach ESL for free maybe they can bring you something to eat or drink, take you to have a coffee. They should feel that it is not free exactly. You are giving Value of Yourself.
If they are healthy eating chickens, or rather, if you feed them very good ingredients, then you would be wasting your efforts by giving them to people who eat any poison available without concern.
Good eggs should only go to those who are trying to avoid the poisons. You make effort, the chickens make effort, dont waste the product, no one is starving, it is a matter of quality.
Thank you, you are very perceptive. I have made every effort to keep my birds in top shape, to feed a diet that makes them healthy and give us healthy eggs. My intent, other than the rescue of some leftovers at Tractor Supply, was to nutrify myself in a healthful way, so that my labor and my fiat could contribute to the overall health of the machine you know as Barnaby.
Once this first gang stole my heart, I bought a new set of hens from Murray McMurray. Now they all pay for themselves, and my family is nutrified in a way we can trust.
I guess what I'm saying is, my secondary intent was to in turn feed people with something that might clear their heads for a moment. As you say, a way to avoid the poisons. (But, as I've learned downthread, who am I to think I can clear someone's head?)
I feel your pain Barnaby, I suggest you stack a pile of worn tires doused with gasoline, step inside and ignite. Your pain will now be realized for all the few in attendance to feel along with you. God bless
Its a problem of nature. Those who seek to lead or rule us understand this completely. We are completely absorbed in how we feel about ourselves, our happiness, our self image. We want to give, to help others, because of how it makes us feel about ourselves. Those receiving this generosity have exactly the same issues. They feel good about themselves, that others might give to them, but only to a point. After that it devalues their self worth. But as we know, it is far easier to adopt self destructive habits, not to mention that is considerably easier to not work than work. Liberals suffer so much from self esteem issues they find it a compulsion to give, but being human, far easier to give what they believe others do not need, to those who in their eyes do need. This is easy to see given how superior they see themselves in this mentality. The poor, those receiving this charity, find themselves resentful and despising those providing it. The funny thing is that the liberals have successfully understood that their optimal position is the middleman. This allows the money to come from the "evil" rich, and be distributed to the deserving "entitled" poor. So the poor's resentment is towards the evil rich while the liberals are simply the Robin Hood. Its a beautiful thing to see it work. Most of us here fully understand how evil this is, how destructive it is to prosperity, but more importantly to our morality....the only thing that can ultimately sustain a society. No one can feel good about themselves who receives free shit. They have been indoctrinated to accept it as their entitlement, but it still erodes their souls, and this ugliness exudes in every thing they do, as it would with any of us.
Money is simply an expression of our society. How it is perceived tells how we see each other.
What is this I'm experiencing?
Stupidity. Furthermore you are a thief.
First it is stupidity because you devalue yourself, your own labor and your product.
Next you are a thief because you steal thier dignity.
Have them earn it so that they can have feel some DIGNITY.
You steal that dignity from them so that you can feel good by believing in your own generousity and self righteousness.
It is bullshit.
The homeless do not come to me asking for a handout for long.
However IF THEY WORK and bring me a Cellphone or an old computer, or maybe some broken jewelry, which they have dug from the trash I will PAY THEM FOR THIER WORK. I have been known to overpay at times...Even if I do not buy what they bring me they will not go away hungry. (I will make sure of that unless it is abused.)
I respect work and effort. That is to be admired and rewarded.
They receive RESPECT and have thier DIGNITY.
Think what it is like to be in thier shoes...Do you think that they like it?
I appreciate what you say and will take it to heart. I once was a thief, I shoplifted a brick of cheese from a neighborhood grocer. There is no suitable justification for my actions although my little brother and I were quite hungry.
To pay back this infraction I would retrieve discarded bottles from the sides of the road, and place them neatly at the grocer's back door until my debt was covered.
The off-shoot of this is as a small boy I learned how to turn effort into coin. Because of my guilt, I made an income for myself.
A loss of dignity does not necessarily produce negative results. Further, you might pay for their work, and you're the arbiter of whether they receive payment or meal. That implies judgment, an act I feel unworthy of performing.
In reply to Everybody,
Thanks for all the insight. And thanks for the smack-down, I can't help but believe entitlements are chains.
Very helpful.
When I can find a stack of tires tall enough for me I might just try it!
bread & circuses.....works all the time..............until the military (with some serious war experience & serious civilian disillusionment/disrespect as the preface ala typcial lefty westerners) wants to get paid .......then the fun starts
I'd worry more about all the mercenaries...... all those 'private contractors' that are the modern US version of Goths fighting for Rome in place of its own citizens..... loyal ONLY to their paymasters and taking no oath to defend anything or anyone
You have the love the half truth and outright BS here. Yeah there is some overall truth but my favorite whopper is how the right continue to assert that the expansion of the welfare state contributed to the decline (nevermind that rates of marriage in the 50s and 60s were historically higher than at any point in US history) and the left argues the same BS about how income inequality has caused a destruction of the family. Both are full of shit and using their talking points.
It is due to two simple factors that any researcher on the topic well knows:
1. The spread of no-fault divorce laws starting with CA in '69 and almost universal state adoption by the mid-70s
2. The widespread spread and adoption of birth control pills in the 60s.
Unless you want to ban no-fault divorce laws at the federal level and ban birth control pills, marriage rates will never approach the rate of the 50s/60s. Instead we'll have to listen to a steady and continued diatribe of BS from both the left and right who both in their own ways to want to interefere in your social life.
You're mostly right. The rise of feminism had a role, too, as did the decreasing stigma attached to out-of-wedlock births, and the Hippie Boomers who savored/favored physical pleasure over respectability and hard work.
Simply put, the Progressive-dominated culture was the seed-bed for all this shit.
More social conservative BS. Yet we continue to have these ridiculous talking points including your from nitwits on the left or right. Unless you want to put the sexual genie back in the bottle (banning birth control) and making divorce almost legally impossible, marriage rates will never rebound to where they were at in the 50s/60s.
Marriages rates today are actually at a similiar level to where they were in the 1890s. I would imagine if we tried to ban birth control it would create a black market I bet that is larger than any controlled illegal substance and make enforcement completely pointless.
Yeah well there seems to be a migration of culture from Europe that strengthened around the 1960s.
Like maybe Europeans were sexually open, and there was a huge Student Movement in Germany in the 1960s.
_ IF the CIA planned to Corrupt the USA, Fund Radical Student Groups, Progressives, Feminists like Gloria Steinen, Block power groups, Counter Culture Groups, anti-war groups... fly in drugs of all kinds... they could not have done a better job.
On the Right you had the FBI, Communist Hunters, farmers and veterans, lots of domestic spying, some assassinations, world unrest, Military Coups.
- But if you wanted USA to be more like Europe without the Philosophy, knowledge of European languages, knowledge of European History... Seems like it might have been a strategy for Liberals or CIA.
But yeah left & right BS. Last Presidential Election I was feeling pretty sure there were at least 3-4 different polarities.
I say no matter if you are Left or Right you have to be a Fiscal Conservative at least in terms of Accounting Rules, Financial ratings, Auditing, and Financial Instruments. The US Business culture has to be very conservative if it wants to surivive. Risk Off.
ridiculous talking points
They're not ridiculous talking points, bizarro. Google "reason decline marriage" and get educated on the multitudinous reasons for low marriage rates. Your 2 reasons are biggies, for sure, but they ain't the universe.
Marriages rates today are actually at a similiar level to where they were in the 1890s.
Again, do some basic Google research. My research indicates otherwise.
Marriage is more of a conservative institution. From the NYTimes:
They note that most conservatives are married; most liberals are not. (The percentages are 53 percent to 33 percent, according to my calculations using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, and almost none of the gap is due to the fact that liberals tend to be younger than conservatives.)
of course marriage is a conservative institution. though you can also find many conservatives engaging in serial marriages
the biggest effect of divorce, though, is financial: you have to be able to afford divorce. particularly when your main residence is loaded with debt, or even underwater
a big-family household is way cheaper then the equivalent of single households. demonstrated in the resilience to joblessness in the southern european countries
and current US statistics point to more single-households then married households, something that wasn't affordable before. and perhaps it is... not
70% of all US divorces are initiated by women. something makes them think differently then before. probably a whole bunch of reasons, and yet, there it is, and part and parcel of a greater culture war where interestingly feminists have great influence, particularly in the US, the UK and Scandinavia
in the article, the author completely dismisses the fact that the european welfare state has a different architecture (*). example in case: the US EBT cards
so yes, it is true that "The modern welfare state has a distinctly European pedigree. Naturally enough, the architecture of the welfare state* was designed and developed with European realities in mind... "
but the "progressivism" of the US-Style welfare state has a distinctly Anglo-American-Scandinavian pedigree. Rooted, interestingly, in the Protestant branches of Christianity
"But thanks to a strong underlying streak of Puritanism, Americans reflexively parsed the needy into two categories: what came to be called the deserving and the undeserving poor. To assist the former, the American prescription was community-based charity from its famously vibrant "voluntary associations.""
and here you have another problem: how do you do community-based charity and voluntary associations for the poor... that don't live near you anymore? then thanks to the developers of the suburbs and the banks that prefer to securitize whole zip-codes, and thanks to the modern homogeneity of income per zip code... the poor that American voluntarysts could help... live elsewhere. and if you don't see them and don't know them, then all poor become... "undeserving"
Spot on.
Out of sigtht, out of mind. Plus what seems to be an inherent in group/out group, or us/them mentality.
Boys and girls play, but so often only the girls pay.
One way to increase marriage rates:
Federal level wage garnishment for child support. No marriage needed, just a positive paternity test. IRS level, tracked to social security/tax ID.
In theory the state would then have to provide less support to children of single mothers.
And parents with any sense would preach the gospel of personal responsibility for birth control to their boys. IOW don't trust that the woman you lay down with has it covered. Heck this could be the best gift for young men, 100% were able to have children after reversal.
http://malecontraceptives.org/methods/mpu.php
Also, could literally make it cheaper to keep her, so a financial incentive to get and stay married at least while kids are under 18.
ETA: best paired with required reliable long term birth control for women AND men if you want to live on the dole.
Who's the one mooching off government? - the 7 Walmart heirs worth more than 40% of the TOTAL US, making $8 million a DAY from ttheir Walmart holdings - or the thousands of Walmart employees who are without company benefits, collecting food stamps because Walmart won't give them 40 hours a week or pay them a living wage?
Who's mooching off government? - the retirees who lost 40% of their 401K's and who are now getting 0.002% interest on 'safe' investments - or the banks who lost hundreds of BILLIONS but got TRILLIONS from the government at 0% interest (and their execs who got hundreds of millions in bonuses)?
When corporations making hundreds of millions off no bid government contracts pay NOTHING in taxes it's not surprising that the employees they laid off are now collecting disability after unemployment ran out.
EVERYONE is gaming the system and mooching off government - but the ones getting billions and kicking back 1% in political contributions are getting a hell of a lot more.....
Haliburton was headed for bankruptcy before all the contracts they got through the 'War on Terror'..... got to love all those bases they built and provisions they supplied - bringing back the term 'shoddy'
My favorite Walmart scam - Alice buying all kinds of previous artwork that she continues to own directly and placing it in the 'Crystal Bridges Museum of Art' in Bentonville which is of course on land she owns and is a massive tax writeoff annually. Actually been one of the most popular scams going and been a key reason why high-end art prices have exploded the past 5 years.
At least robber barons in the late 19th century though art should be used to educate and better the lives of ordinary citizens in public places or the public.
I swear Tyler must have some kind of split personality disorder! On the one hand we see daily the evidence of a collapsing economy, starting to implode from half a century of its own accumulated greed and folly. Then we get articles like this, intent on blaming the collapse on the growing number of increasingly desperate people who are turning as a last resort to the government for help.
What is valuable here beneath the BS is the evidence that the government is reaching the limit of its ability to help the people survive the unfolding economic supernova. But it comes packaged with this "blame yourselves" poison, so like too much Tyler does it's not something I would ever want to share with anyone in that position.
It is an Irving Kristol rag - it is a publication that is a mouthpiee for Israeli interests, didn't meet a war it didn't like, and is a whore for Chamber of Commerce/Fortune 500. Basically an incarnation of most of the mainstream GOP party today.
When I was growing up, getting welfare
or other gov't help was embarrassing. Now it
is considered getting over and they laugh.
The problem with this country doesn't lie in
it's balance sheet or interest rates, the real
problem is the new morality. This ship is too big
to turn around and the gutless politicians are more
than happy to go with the flow.
I just heard today that a new national pole came out this week where Obama's approval rating has come back up to, yes, believe it or not, 50%
So why are still surprised?
It may seem like a Hope and Crosby "Road" movie to them now. Wait until it's more like "The Road" with Viggo Mortensen.
Numbers. When the percentage claiming welfare is small the peer pressure works in an anti-welfare direction but when the percentage gets too high the peer pressure flips in the opposite direction.
The previous non-hostile elite understood this hence their belief in a full employment policy. It was the bankster takeover and their belief that having high unemployment was good for labor market flexibility that changed things starting with the 1965 immigration act.
Giving trillions of dollars by today's taxpayers and future taxpayers each year to shareholders of big business and banks is what makes AmeriKa AmeriKa. Feeding the hungry and the poor is "socialism". In other words, the interest of the community is for making billionaires triilionares only. If you're not one, you can go fuck yourself. Freedom!
the MAJORITY of AMERIKANS are beyond STUPID.....
WHEN INTERVIEWED, PEOPLE WERE ASKED HOW THEY FELT ABOUT mlk JUST PASSING AWAY... AND BELIEVING HE WAS THE FIRST BLACK TO WALK ON THE MOON, WAS THE FIRST BLACK ASTRONAUT, WAS ON MT RUSHMORE, JUST DIED OF A HEART ATTACK, THOUGHT THERE SHOULD BE A HOLIDAY FOR HIS PASSING..... disabilty is the new unemployment benefit... Amerika is disabled and hence a retard gets in twice...
Just give em an iphone / android, a video game, twitter and they are oblivious to reality..... p a t h e t i c
and even more pathetic is,..... the other 50% put up with this shit.....
What exactly do you want to happen? While a tax strike or non-compliance can accelerate things a bit, the other 50% know darn well this cannot continue much longer. Let it collapse of it's own weight and the 50% getting checks take out the bad people.
Works for me. The problem is basically, self-correcting you see?
and even more pathetic is,..... the other 50% put up with this shit.....
Of course, the author is right. Conservatism always nails it.
listen guys
there is nothing we can do, communism is eroding our liberties.
enjoy the fact that we have paved roads, electricity and running water because in the not so distant future these things will be memories of the past.
National Geographic magazine thinks America in 2050 is going to be beautiful!
Comparing Social Security and Medicare where money was paid in the form of taxes to the programs where no money was paid and all that is required is to have a certain income level or number of children is not right.
This is tax season and all over I see signs, "$3035 for one child" and "+$5000" for two. Now how is that comparable to someone paying 2 to 300,000 dollars into a system over their lifetime?
At 66 I am still working, have company insurance. I receive no SS as yet. All I ask for me to decline the money is to pay me out with a small 3-4% interest just like my company will pay me out when / if I retire.
Medicare, Medicaid... We had a good medical system until Nixon decided to corporatize it. Anyone in their right mind realizes a corporations bottom line is far more important than life itself. They have proved that on many occasions.
And the millennials who are jobless because of those same corporations with government approval offshored all the production and the jobs that went with it due to NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT and the rest. Now they are onshoring with H1B visas and illegals. The leftovers are for Americans. I distinctly remember most Americans (that be boomers) at the time were against it but they went ahead with it anyhow... just like they do everything today.
Just sayin...
" The leftovers are for Americans. "
More accurate to say for White American males.
Cut my benefits, kick me out of college and force me to work and I'll be fighting before I ever get a job bitchez. Yellen can keep the presses rolling till I'm in the shadow of a mushroom cloud. I ain't wokin to make no English / EU / NWO bankster M'Fer wealthy.
Welfare allows the oligarchs to pay below subsistence wages. It's another bankster scam. Without it there'd have been a revolution years ago.
Also as well as the 1% being the true beneficiaries of welfare indirectly - through the money they save on wage costs - they are also the biggest recipients of direct welfare through the ongoing pouring of money into the banks.
Whoever wrote this junk is completely out of touch and has clearly not noticed that people are wising up to the corporate bankster/government scam.
The 0.1% is walking off with hundreds of billions in handouts, gold plated privileges and get out of jail free cards...while the 99% are getting shafted harder and harder, with less and less lubricant.
Yes and ironically if you take the advice of these sorts of commentators and account for the real infation rate and then adjust government spending accordingly, then you see that government handouts have been going down for 40 years. It's these kinds of garbage articles that turned me away from ZeroHead a while ago. They do have some insightful commentary here every once and a while, and some good coverage of unfolding events but beyond that it's just as much a propaganda mouthpiece as is the US Government; just playing up the other side of the one dimensional political spectrum.
I do ponder if the far right, racist, conspiracy theory, etc. comments are here to drive people away.
My spouse calls ZH "that loony right wing CT site".
Oftentimes there are good articles that I know better than to share because the comments will turn people off and negate the message.
Then there will be a crap article like this (not left vs. right, just reality vs. propaganda) and I am pleasantly surprised at the number of reality based comments calling out the BS.
You're right. Fox, NY Times and CNBC provide me with all the unbiased reporting I need.
My three main missions in life are:
1) Educate the sheeple as to how, why, and who impoverished them and stole their, and their kids' future. I care not that they should have seen it coming, or were asleep, I care only that they know who must pay them back.
2) Remove the tyrants and Restore the Constitutional republic. A unifying goal that leaves no room for tyrants, or thieves by fiat and usury.
3) Man the guillotines. Thieves and traitors must pay back what they have stolen: Gold, silver, or heads are accepted.
The banksters need to repay us.
To Restore governmnet of the people, the guillotines of the people must be loosed.
This Zerobrains article is mostly nonsense, political garbage. None of these anti-welfare state lobbyists can actually tell you what they expect people to be doing for jobs instead of living off government welfare. How many jobs have been lost to robots and offshoring? They don't understand the underlying trends; all they can do is point to them and say, "Nnnn! Wrong!!! Does not compute! Does not agree with Ludwig von Mises!"
Are retired people entitled to the entitlements they have paid for? Are they responsible for a government that wastes their retirement on military adventures? End the military and shut down half of the useless government and then lets see how it looks.
"The modern welfare state has a distinctly European pedigree."
Yes, the US is turning into Europe a mixture of old and new Europe.
A rich aristocracy and a poor majority like old Europe.
A welfare state like modern Europe.
Only third world countries in the modern world have a very rich few and the majority poor with no welfare state.
I agree they had lots of control in Europe and had lots of poor. People didn't spend so much for housing and tried to put money away while setting their sights on a career or more menial unskilled work.
- The control over people in Europe was of low economic growth and low economic expectations for the general populous.
- Looks to me like, USA had segments of low expectations, but the American Idea was of Freedom, Liberty, Justice... and Independent men, Pioneers, Mavericks.
- Japan Video, Princes of the Yen, seems to show a model for "Too Much Money" too much lending, creating a financial bubble, then 30 years of stagnation
They want USA Like Europe control wise, but used the US Economy just as they did in Japan.
Don't forget the Royal Lineage part.
US elites who don't belive in a welfare state belong in the third world.
What they are trying to do is make the whole of the US become third world for their benefit.
I afraid they kind of divided up the world already, till they see a new spot they want.
The Hacienda families still rule like Royalty or like nice rich people in South America.
They hang on to the land. Little land reform, but I think Obama gave a bunch to the Navajos recently.
Anyway, give them a change they take the water, like in Bolivia.
"The Road To The Welfare State: Why 50% Of "Exceptional" America Gets Checks From Uncle Sam"
If I stole from you, payments back to you for compensation would be called restitution.
If I stole from you to give to my grandmother, would you despise, and resent, my grandmother, or me, the thief?
If someone destroys someone's economic opportunities by way of theft and violence, treason, compensation paid to that person by the plunderer can rightfully be called restitution?
If the same plunderer funds his restitution payments with additional theft, and violence, treason, from more victims, should you despise, and resent, the first victim's restitution, or the thief?
Don't hate the welfare recipient. Hate the welfare creator, and thief.
The banksters need to repay us.
A clothes-worn homeless man with a shopping cart full with metals, and plastic, benefits the economy, and his fellow man, more than all of the venomous fitted-suit parasites of governmnet combined.
A clothes-worn homeless man with a shopping cart full with metals, and plastic, benefits the economy, and his fellow man, more than all of the venomous fitted-suit parasites of governmnet combined.
AS long as they bring me the Gold...
Seriously I cannot agree more.
"Don't hate the welfare recipient. Hate the welfare creator, and thief."
I'm a dummy and work 2 jobs and pay thousands of dollars/mo in taxes. It is a challenge to not hate the welfare recipient. But I know that the system (political, educational, economic, etc) has been rigged for years to get to this point where that welfare recipient has lost any sense of shame, self-worth, or even understanding of American history. THAT is what I hate.
What I hate most is that I don't think it can be reversed at this point. Who is John Galt?
The hole to the stake that there is nothing in it.
50% of exceptional America get checks from Uncle Sam and the next 49% are sure to join them in good time.
Or maybe they will have everyone gather in stadiums where 40,000 checks will be dropped to 80,000 people.
We are approaching check mate !!
It's only a transition phase:
It's because the nation-state should be destroyed as the elementary mechanism required to protect the rights of the majority. Until then, the state will be used to distribute a minimum subvention to the armies of unemployed, so that the big banks and corporations not to be threatened by sudden and massive uncontrolled riots of totally desperate people.
I'd much prefer to see % increase beyond the % of increase of population. The Entitlement Dependence block data makes my head hurt.
A good picture is better than a thousand words.
Confusing article IMHO
Wow, votes are getting cheaper
50% of "exceptional" America get a check from Uncle Sam? I think they mean '50% of "exceptional" America gets a check from the rest of us who actually work and produce something, plus China.
We printed some folks back to living in caves.
"It is no secret that the American middle class is under great pressure these days. Most commentary and analysis on this question has focused on "structural," material reasons for this phenomenon: globalization, the faltering American jobs machine, widening economic differences in society, difficulties in keeping up the pace of mobility, and many others."..
Perhaps this should have come in two parts?
The "Why" 50% of Americans is clear, but it doesn't explain the "How" in the paragraph above that is responsible for the economic decay through outsourcing that became much more pernicious after Johnson's War on poverty and accelerated to the point that the corporation(s) that either patented or bought those technologies outright deliberately have made that welfare state a reality out of choice!
With the advancement of technology, outsourcing was inevitable. HOWEVER, mass regulations (e.g. OSHA, DEpt of Energy, etc) make the idea of outsourcing MUCH more attractive to the average American business.
With the advancement of technology, outsourcing was inevitable
Then why are there still governments like Germany that invest in their workforce where they incentivise training in latest technologies because the idea is to keep them working and the jobs within their borders?
Detroit never needed to sell out to big oil if they had kept the patent(s) for the hybrid technolgies and built the next generation electric car as they started 25 years ago then scrapped it deliberately!
Sure it would have been more expensive to keep those jobs in the U.S. but we would still own the technologies around it and more Americans would be working in American factories creating next generation fuel efficient products without the need for buying into the welfare system. Did anyone pick up on "Secret Chimps" lies about the U.S. being the leader in the production and consuption of solar and wind energy technologies in the state of the union speech that was written for him?!!! It was one of too many lies to count throughout the speech but for anyone paying attention it was enough to yell the "F word" many times!!!
I could also say the same for semiconductor and computer manufacturing. But why bother when all the commercial Tier level support to America's communications networks that require skills in English have been shipped off to Bangalore as well?
This is like watching a movie on the Holocaust or some other tragedy, that is infinitely more depressing than a fictional story because you're telling yourself: "this is true, it happened".
What the article doesn't really touch on too much is the connection between the erasing of American history from the younger populations and the role entitlements play in the political system. We are cooked. Can we ever really resurrect a great America when an obvious Marxist is elected and then re-elected? That takes A LOT of stupid.
Like a Holocaust movie except: everone is dying from diabetttis, prison is the living room and the guard is the tv. Joking aside, resurrection comes from a personal and community level. Chicago will not move (if ever) at the same pace as Billings in the resurgence. Place yourself mentally in the game and hope you live somewhere that has like minded people. The entitlements will cease and people will be forced to live again.
Are you suggesting that the Holocau$t didn't happen exactly as we've been told? If so expect a midnight knock from the Thought Police.
Yeah I certainly know what you mean, especially when they are all based on lies!
Rewarding illigitamacy is part of the globalist plan to expand minority populations in order to encourage a diverse globalist- accepting public.
Above all the plan is to dilute the anglo-Protestant former majority that promoted sovereign national laws, identity and a resistance to our hidden Jesuit, Masonic and Zionist globalist rulers that planned this socialist, fascist cluster F.
see protestant historian Eric Jon Phelps on utube describe this hidden globalist NWO conspiracy to enslave and control the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F31TmQ9GwU
Undoubtedly as I read through the comments I'll see numerous references to the government charity given to the parasitical bankers. A valid point but it doesn't take away from the point of this article. Living off welfare destroys the recipients and ultimately the country paying them.
A revolution will not happen without a major economic implosion. That is the ONLY way people will wake the fuck up.
Sorry.
Despite the majority of Americans being genetically identical to Europeans, and despite many cultural similarities, Americans are actually very different from Europeans in the nature of their social expectations - particularly with authorities.
The Welfare-State here will end when the middle class is no longer able to support it - a la Rand in 'Atlas Shrugged'. The character of the eggs broken to make the welfare-state omlet is entirely different than their European counterparts.
People talk of the 'zombies' (welfare recipients) after the government checks bounce, with fear. They will learn that the legions of competent, self-reliant, resourceful people who have been sacrificed on the Altar of welfarism (socialism), entirely devoid of loyalty to the .1% who broke them or the 60% who looted them or any of their institutions, will competently, self-reliantly, and resourcefully wage war on them.
They will learn that the mobs they fear today are actually pathetic, and pale in comparison to the capabilities of disciplined and competent people bent on destruction.