Imagine shivering in the cold, homeless, hungry, your children crying because they are scared and starving...
Next, imagine a kindly man and a group of his helpers ushering you in to a warm home with food and beds, but it's all a trick. He ends up chaining you to his basement wall...
Sure, it's damp and chilly, but it's warmer than being outside... He feeds you stale, unhealthy scraps, but it's better than starving... After a few years of this, it doesn't seem so bad...
You could escape, but it's so scary outside on your own...
OK. Maybe that's not the best analogy for government assistance.
I'd say government more resembles a crack dealer who gives you the first rock free, knowing you'll be back with money in your hand. Having permanently hooked and ruined the poor, Uncle Sam began peddling to the middle class...
A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.
Almost half of all Americans lived in households that received government benefits in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. The share climbed from 37.7 percent in 1998 to 44.5 percent in 2006, before the recession, to 48.5 percent in 2010. (NY Times)Read this and weep...
* The average individual who relies on Washington could receive benefits valued at $32,748, more than the nation’s average disposable personal income ($32,446).
* Nearly half of the U.S. population (49.5 percent) does not pay any federal income taxes
* As of now, 70 percent of the federal government’s budget goes to individual assistance programs
Source: Dependence on Government Highest in HistoryHere's more...
The federal government sent a record $2 trillion to individuals in fiscal 2010, up nearly 75% from 10 years earlier. (Government Assistance Expands)That last one comes from CNN's ironically-named series, The New American Dream
See also Our Budget Quagmire
56 comments:
I've said it before: Greece-style riots will hit America by 2020. The problem with socialism (well one of the many problems) is that it's easy to give people stuff but when the money runs out and you can't afford it anymore and tell the public that their "benefits" will be cut they react like crack addicts whose fix has been stolen.
We are in deep doo-doo.
We're on an unsustainable path with this.
Of course, the addicted leftists will scream "grandma killer" at you if you want to make any cut or reform or change to their government gravy boat.
The really politically addicted ones will text you these lurid harassments from their Welfare State cell phone.
OK. Maybe that's not the best analogy for government assistance.
------
No, it's one of the more asinine.
The Welfare State American Dream: living a $60,000 a year lifestyle on just $14,500 a year.
And you only "lose" around $6,000 in "free" government bennies if you say "screw that $14,500 a year 40 hours a week minimum wage job" and only work one week a month at it ($3,625 a year)
Work minimum wage and sign up for the totalitarian Welfare State. You'll live better than the $60,000 a year guy that's paying for it!
Even otherwise rational folks I know are unable to connect these dots. It is making for a very lonely world.
Keep up with the times,Silverfiddle
"The federal government sent a record $2 trillion to individuals in fiscal 2010,..."
Federal tax revenues in 2010 were just over $2 trillion. That means our national defense, our federal court system and all of our agencies like: DOJ, EPA, FCC, FDA, and etc., were paid for with borrowed money. The end is nearer than we think!
I heard an interview on radio about this very subject, the guests name escapes me but he stated a perfect answer when asked by the host of the show how he would describe the current U.S. government;
"A huge social services agency with a little defense and justice work on the side".
Where do you keep your money, Ducky -- the Cayman Islands? The Isle of Mann? In gold buried in a bunker in a secret location?
If you are participating in the financial system we are stuck with today, how you could have any confidence that most of your wealth won't either be swept away in the next market crash, taxed away by the Marxicrats you so adore, or officially devalued to the point where you'll need $100,000.00 or more just to buy a week's worth of groceries I can't imagine?
What we have been doing since the 1930's is INSANE.
Talk about UNSUSTAINABLE!
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I now spend more on ONE piddly little BREAKFAST at a DINER than my grandfather spent to feed his entire family of TEN for a full WEEK.
When I was in college, I could buy a beautiful grilled cheese, tuna, and tomato sandwich with chips, a pickle and a beverage for -- now get this -- THIRTY-FIVE friggin' CENTS.
And some people have the colossal effrontery -- the unmitigated gall -- to imagine we've been making PROGRESS?
GEDDOUDDAHERE!
~ FreeThinke
The people of Joplin, MO are highly offended by this post. But, hell lots of them are dead and what are actual human lives ruined by out-of-control weather when balanced against a rich man's right, ABSOLUTE RIGHT, to have his deferred income taxed at 15%!
After all it's in the constitution...
Grunge-e-Gene,
I live in Missouri. I know for a fact those dead Joplinites can still vote in Democratic primaries, and general elections.
And their pets can too.
"Nearly half of the U.S. population (49.5 percent) does not pay any federal income taxes"
If taxation without representation was tyranny isn't representation without taxation equally so?
Why do we allow those who make no contribution to the public purse a voice in how that money is spent?
viburnum
If taxation without representation was tyranny isn't representation without taxation equally so?
Interesting point. A libertarian corollary to that ought to be "how much representation should taxation subsidize," if we call the opposite of tyranny "liberty."
But then we're back to pointing out how our present Welfare State rewards the guy who makes $14,500 a year more after-tax net disposable income and economic freedom (around $3,400) than the guy who makes $60,000 and pays all taxes upon his income.
The guy making $60,000 a year is paying for his own family's food, shelter, and health care AND throwing into a pool of resources to pay for food, shelter, and health care for guy that makes $14,500 a year. At the bottom line, the $60,000 a year guy gets to live off of $34,366 after taxes. The guy making $14,500 a year gets to tap the pool created by the $60,000 a year guy and others like him, to walk away with $37,777 a year to live off of.
WHY WORK? Why try to advance into a higher paying job or position in America? You'll certainly make more money sitting on your ass doing nothing or next to it.
No, representation without taxation is neither tyranny no liberty, but it is something like putting the bubonic plague and other parasitic diseases on the federally protected Endangered Species list and subsidizing Petri dishes and hapless victims for it to thrive in.
viburnum,
It really must chaps your hide those poor people who earn or scrounge by on $25,000 a year pay no federal income tax. How scandalous! How unfair! Why should they get a free ride like that!
So, go ahead and vote for either the Vulture, the Creep or the Hypocrite. Each of their Tax Plans guarantees to INCREASE taxes on the poor and middle class and DECREASE them on the Super Rich.
Those Who Own the Country Ought to Run it...
@ Gene: The people of Joplin, MO are highly offended by this post.
Wow! You're a spokesman for an entire city? I'm impressed!
Actually, Silverfiddle on this blog with these commenters I'm the spokesman for humanity.
It really must chaps your hide those poor people who earn or scrounge by on $25,000 a year pay no federal income tax. How scandalous! How unfair! Why should they get a free ride like that!
Indeed, why should they? Why does a guy making $14,500 a year wind up with $37,777 in net disposable income to buy food, shelter, and health care while the guy who gets left with $34,366 a year to buy his own food, shelter, and health care with after the goverment taxes the crap out of his $60,000 a year income?
The single wage family of 3 making $60,000 a year pays $16,034 of that income to cover their taxes, leaving them $43,966 to buy food, shelter, child care, and health care with.
The single wage family of 3 making $14,500 a year pays $1,950 a year in taxes, leaving them with $12,500 to buy food, shelter, child care, and health care with, with an additional $34,827 in government assistance the $60,000 a year family of 3 is ineligible for.
The $60,000 a year family gets to live off of $43,966 after the Welfare State is done robbing them.
The $14,500 a yeat family gets to live off of $47,327 after the Welfare State is done rewarding them.
The conclusion is apparent. It is a priority of the Welfare State to make sure a family that earns 76% less than a $60,000 a year family recieves a disposable annual income 7.1% higher than that $60,000 a year household that actually earned its disposable income.
Actually, Silverfiddle on this blog with these commenters I'm the spokesman for humanity.
Funny, I must have not heard your "voice of humanity" over my chainsaw when I went to Joplin to help clear debris.
...at my own expense, mind you. Nobody paid for my saw gas, my labor, or my lodging while I was there, unless of course, I'm "nobody."
Want to see a bureaucratic clusterfuck... try volunteering to avoid the paperwork of being a FEMA contractor during a tornado cleanup.
It's actually ILLEGAL to directly help people in need.
John Dickinson 1776: Many men without property will protect the possibility of becoming rich, rather than admit the reality of being poor.
Class warfare: A state of conflict in which the aggressors whine like little bitches that the victims of aggression are committing war crimes when they point it out.
...I could have paid a huge fine / went to jail for removing damaged trees out of a Joplin neigborhood for FREE - at my own expense - so that more homes could be saved and power and utilities could be restored more efficiently.
Seems "we the people" ain't the government after all.
Class warfare: A state of conflict in which the aggressors whine like little bitches that the victims of aggression are committing war crimes when they point it out.
Is that what you call the fart noises you leftists make when asked to explain why the Welfare State allows the $14,500 a year minimum wager to live with 7.1% more disposable income than the guy making $60,000 a year?
No, that's you whining like an ignorant little Libertarian bitch.
This is such a destructive path and it has to stop.
I know that there those people who truly need government assistance, the disabled elderly, who worked all their lives and are unable to any longer.
But to see healthy people living off the government really ticks me off!! I have a friend who complained, that she spent all of her "Food stamp money" for a Super Bowl game and hardly anyone showed up. She is living with her domestic "partner" not working and completely dependent on the government. She can work, but doesn't, because she has one kid? Really?
That kind of scenario has to stop. It's not fair to us hardworking people to have to carry the burden and load for those to lazy to get jobs and carry their own weight.
What about the rest of us?
Ooooh! Ducky Wucky's engaging in rough talk, watch out everybody!
No, that's you whining like an ignorant little Libertarian bitch.
But Ducky, you're calling the $60,000 a year guy that loses 37% of his income to Welfare State tax revenue confiscation for nothing in return an "oppressor," and the "oppressed" is the guy that made $14,500 a year that "invested" 13.4% of his income into the Welfare State for a 1783% return on that "investment" to make back 2.8 times as much disposable income as he actually earned from working.
Who's really oppressing who, Mr. "Progressive Taxation?"
The $60K a year guy getting zero return on his 37% investment into Welfare State Inc., or the $14.5K a year guy getting a 1783% return on his 13.4% investment into that same Welfare State Inc.?
I think Beamish nails it here....the lefties hear Conservatives try to protect the needy from getting into the trap Silverfiddle so well describes in his post and then surmise we conservatives don't care about the poor.
He went, he helped, he paid, he DID SOMETHING> ON his OWN.
Every church I know has huge projects helping the poor, most Conservatives I know give huge amounts (more than the Left, by the way, according to stats), etc etc.. But we're labeled uncaring and inhumane because we don't want our children to grow up expecting fish instead of being given a fishing rod.
SF, that's not a CNN irony, gov't spending way too much IS their dream.
Especially who's "oppressed" when $60K / year guy has to pay taxes on any food, shelter, and health care he buys with the $43.9K the government doesn't take from him, while $14.5K / year guy gets to spend $47.3K ($34.8K of which he didn't earn) virtually tax-free?
I think Beamish nails it here....the lefties hear Conservatives try to protect the needy from getting into the trap Silverfiddle so well describes in his post and then surmise we conservatives don't care about the poor.
Now you know why I have ZERO sympathy or tolerance for far-left demogogues screeching "Granny Killer" at me for suggesting the totalitarian Welfare State be dismantled.
Is that what you call the fart noises you leftists make when asked to explain why the Welfare State allows the $14,500 a year minimum wager to live with 7.1% more disposable income than the guy making $60,000 a year?
--------
Usually you have to ride the short bus to hear stupidity like that.
Gene: Each of their Tax Plans guarantees to INCREASE taxes on the poor and middle class and DECREASE them on the Super Rich.
Really? Which one supports a flat universal tax rate without exemptions, exclusions, and loopholes?
I've got a primary coming up. ;-)
viburnum
Usually you have to ride the short bus to hear stupidity like that.
Stop licking the short bus windows and bring that "living the life of the mind" crap you farcically allege that leftists engage in between bouts of mistaking urine samples for art and answer the question, Ducky.
The math is solid. A person who makes $14,500 a year has $47,327 virtually tax-free to play with after the Welfare State rewards his life failures.
Now, I understand math and economic reasoning eludes the grasp of the logic-deficient left, but we righties invented calculators so you're not all stuck munching crayons and imagining Baudelaire is deep.
C'mon, Ducky. At least try to qualify for this boxing match.
Gene: It really must chaps your hide those poor people who earn or scrounge by on $25,000 a year pay no federal income tax. How scandalous! How unfair! Why should they get a free ride like that!
I don't necessarily object to their not having to pay taxes. I object to their being pandered to by politicians anxious to spend money taken from the rest of us to support them in the manner in which they've become far too accustomed in return for their votes.
One of my pet peeves for the past 20 or so years here in Pennsylvania is something called the Kensington Welfare Rights Organization. Founded when Democratic Governor Bob Casey attempted to institute reforms, they took to the streets with no other platform than to insist on their 'right' to feed at the public trough. The idea of actually working to better ones life apparently not having occurred to them, since the government had previously removed any incentive to do so.
viburnum
HERE IS OUR SITUATION DESCRIBED IN TERMS SO SIMPLE EVEN A LIBERAL SHOULD BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THEM:
The folks who are getting the free stuff don't like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.
The folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop, and the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!
Now... The people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff to pony up have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff, that the people who are PAYING for the free stuff, are a bunch of mean, selfish, bigoted, evil racists.
So... The people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff, and giving it to them in the first place.
We have let the free stuff giving go on so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.
Now understand this:
All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason? The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them.
The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 235 years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff. We have one chance to change that. The 2012 election.
Failure to vote for regime change in November is likely to spell the end of the United States as we have known it.
Courtesy of the Netwits and Websages
Submitted by FreeThinke
Can I get an Amen brothers and sisters?
AMEN
Can I get a Hallelujah?
HALLELUJAH
Great Synopsis FT
Thank you, Finntann.
I wish I could claim authorship, but it was a gift that just popped into my Inbox. I thought it was pretty good, or I wouldn't have posted it.
Sometimes a "simplistic" argument like that really can get the point across with greater impact than the heavily detailed scholarly approach.
All a matter of Common Sense, isn't it?
Now tell me whatever happened to Common Sense? It's not very common anymore, is it?
Happy Trails to You,
~ FT
AMEN!! HALLELUJAH!!! and BRAVO!!!!
Thanks for posting it FT, but don't hold your breath waiting on liberal comprehension. I've been trying for years just to get some of them to understand the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
You know, the one that says "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!
viburnum
Ooooh! Ducky Wucky's engaging in rough talk, watch out everybody!
------
I know, your blog brings out the worst in me, Silver..
I'm in a really good mood today. I had my cast removed and the bone is in a great position. Everything's fine and then I visit your blog.
Come on Ducky, you know you don't have as much fun with people who just mindlessly agree with you.
Cheers!
Ducky: You think you've got it bad. Imagine being chained to Uncle Sam's basement for multiple generations.
Okay Silver, this ridiculous hyperbole has to stop.
"The average individual who relies on Washington could receive benefits valued at $32,748, more than the nation’s average disposable personal income ($32,446)."
Bullshit. "Could?" Could???" What a bullshit point.
"Nearly half of the U.S. population (49.5 percent) does not pay any federal income taxes"
That's a lie. Most everyone pays federal income taxes in one way or another. And for most net tax gain workers, they still lend their ever-devaluing money to the government with every pay check.
"As of now, 70 percent of the federal government’s budget goes to individual assistance programs
Source: Dependence on Government Highest in History"
That's Medicare and Social Security, genius. Care to propose getting rid of them? Good luck with that. Old people vote, Silver.
America is no more or less at the ledge of decline than it has been since the late seventies. You cons have had your way for over thirty years now, and all we have a shit, with bullshit to explain it away.
JMJ
Chained in Uncle Sam's basement...?
Isn't that the motto of the Democrat Party?
" America is no more or less at the ledge of decline than it has been since the late seventies."
You mean we're no worse off than we were under the peanut picking poltroon Carter? That's encouraging.
viburnum
viburnum,
"You mean we're no worse off than we were under the peanut picking poltroon Carter? That's encouraging."
No. I mean we're far worse off since the Milton Friedman school of economics insinuated itself in the Fed and Treasury, starting with Volker, then Greenspan, etc.
JMJ
"Nearly half of the U.S. population (49.5 percent) does not pay any federal income taxes"
It gets even worst, most of these freeloaders get a tax REFUND!
Now I can see if you're too poor to pay taxes, but when you hit zero, then you break even and don't pay. But to get more in refunds that you paid in. Guess where that is coming from?
Jersey:
The operative phrase in your statement was "no more or less at the ledge" which compares our current state now to then. Since what the two periods obviously have in common is a clueless and ineffective President you can hardly blame me for drawing the comparison.
Since the economy leading up to Carter's miasma was guided by Keynesian principles perhaps the lesson should be that governments aren't competent to manage economies and they should just butt out ?
viburnum
It's the same out here, welfare only grows. We have middle class welfare expanding under even Conservative government because that's what people want.
Even those of us who don't want it get it. We'd rather not take it in exchange for lower taxation but that won't happen, so we might as well take back what they've stolen from us in the first place.
Once you let the crack dealer in, he never leaves.
Excuse, I meant "malaise". It's early.
Then again, the economy really did stink back then so perhaps miasma is apt as well.
viburnum
Beamish said:
You'll certainly make more money sitting on your ass doing nothing or next to it.
Obviously, Mr. AOW's situation is that he cannot work. Hell, he cannot even stay awake more than four hours most of the time. Such is the result of a large thalamic stroke.
BTW, Mr. AOW pays taxes on his Social Security Disability income of about $15,000/year because I make over $30,000 (barely). Now, if I quit work and sat on my ass and collected Social Security, we'd pay no income taxes at all -- or nearly none. Certainly, we'd be ahead by my not having to pay SE tax. As it is right now, we pay about $10,000 in federal and SE tax. State income tax is about $500.
Right Wing Theocrat said:
Even those of us who don't want it get it.
The same applies to Medicare. And it's a non-starter to find other health insurance coverage over age 65.
OD357 said:
"Nearly half of the U.S. population (49.5 percent) does not pay any federal income taxes"
It gets even worst, most of these freeloaders get a tax REFUND!
And/or a tax credit, which amounts to the same thing. More federal deficit.
@ Jersey: Bullshit. "Could?" Could???" What a bullshit point.
Ah! Another trenchant comment from Mr.McJones. How could we argue with such unassailable logic?
With facts, of course. Face it Jersey, when you start slinging crap like that, you are out of ammo.
Pull your head out of your msnbc and look at the real world.
Go here and scroll down to chart 13 and read what government sources they got the data from and their methodology:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/02/2012-index-of-dependence-on-government
beamish, 'dismantled' will never work...and it stops conversation and gets people ticked.
REARRANGED is a better term.
Z,
Whatever gets government out of the charity-at-gunpoint business.
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