Call it the "Taking thing" or whatever you want. When Work Is Punished: The Tragedy Of America's Welfare State Link Exactly two years ago, some of the more politically biased progressive media outlets (who are quite adept at creating and taking down their own strawmen arguments, if not quite as adept at using an abacus, let alone a calculator) took offense at our article ""In Entitlement America, The Head Of A Household Of Four Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than A Family Making $60,000 A Year." In it we merely explained what has become the painful reality in America: for increasingly more it is now more lucrative - in the form of actual disposable income - to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. This is graphically, and very painfully confirmed, in the below chart from Gary Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (a state best known for its broke capital Harrisburg). As quantitied, and explained by Alexander, "the single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045." We realize that this is a painful topic in a country in which the issue of welfare benefits, and cutting (or not) the spending side of the fiscal cliff, have become the two most sensitive social topics. Alas, none of that changes the matrix of incentives for most Americans who find themselves in a comparable situation: either being on the left side of minimum US wage, and relying on benefits, or move to the right side at far greater personal investment of work, and energy, and... have the same disposable income at the end of the day. Naturally, the topic of wealth redistribution is paramount one now that America is entering the terminal phase of its out of control spending, and whose response to hike taxes in a globalized, easily fungible world, will merely force more of the uber-wealthy to find offshore tax jurisdictions, avoid US taxation altogether, and thus result to even lower budget revenues for the US. It explains why the cluelessly incompetent but supposedly impartial Congressional Budget Office just released a key paper titled "Share of Returns Filed by Low- and Moderate-Income Workers, by Marginal Tax Rate, Under 2012 Law" which carries a chart of disposable income by net income comparable to the one above. But perhaps the scariest chart in the entire presentation is the following summarizing the unsustainable welfare burden on current taxpayers: For every 1.65 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance For every 1.25 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance or works for the government. The punchline: 110 million privately employed workers; 88 million welfare recipients and government workers and rising rapidly. And since nothing has changed in the past two years, and in fact the situation has gotten progressively (pardon the pun) worse, here is our conclusion on this topic from two years ago: We have been writing for over a year, how the very top of America's social order steals from the middle class each and every day. Now we finally know that the very bottom of the entitlement food chain also makes out like a bandit compared to that idiot American who actually works and pays their taxes. One can only also hope that in addition to seeing their disposable income be eaten away by a kleptocratic entitlement state, that the disappearing middle class is also selling off its weaponry. Because if it isn't, and if it finally decides it has had enough, the outcome will not be surprising at all: it will be the same old that has occurred in virtually every revolution in the history of the world to date. But for now, just stick head in sand, and pretend all is good. Self-deception is now the only thing left for the entire insolvent entitlement-addicted world. ****************** Full must read presentation: "Welfare's Failure and the Solution" <a title="View welfare failure on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/114628958" style="margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block; text-decoration: underline;">welfare failure </a><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" src="http://www.scribd.com/embeds/114628958/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll" data-auto-height="true" data-aspect-ratio="" scrolling="no" id="doc_71615" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>
I'm sure people will attack the sources of the data, but not the data itself. No one ever goes after the data, of course.
Great, now that it's out of the way, what else have you got? I'm assuming (dangerous, I know) that you support Krugman's statement. My entire post here was in response to the Krugman quote you made where he said the takers issue is all about health care. So do you support Krugman's argument or not?
\ We can discuss social nets and what should be done if you like, but that isn't the point of the article. The main point of the article is that we are in danger of overtaking the output of those contributing with the given entitlements of those who take. Read the scrib document - it has a solution near the end, insofar as healthcare goes. With the RI slides.
The tipping point has passed, now we are pretending that it never happened by living on the credit card. Of course this is unworkable but you have to remember one thing, that's what they want. They want the destruction of the free capitalism and replaced with state capitalism, which of course will accelerate the fall. It's all good with liberals, all that matters is that they feel life is fair. Tsing, you can present the data all you want, you are arguing against their religion and they don't care.
I cannot dispute that data, and it used to really get on my nerves to have to pay in so Mary Jo can get 5k tax refund. But, until we can put a viable and realistic social net on the table, there will be no discussion. It's about the children, Tsing, didn't you know that?