When do "entitlements" go too far?

[LordBrownTrout]

Workers didn't contribute to defense/military like they paid into Social Security and Medicare their entire working lives via payroll taxes. So how can they be compared for spending cuts?

If you pay income taxes, you contribute to defense.... oh wait....

Never mind.

How about your 401(k)? Is that also on the table...?

You would go along with this: The Government Wants to Hijack Your 401(k) - Money Morning

 

[Londoner]

I wanted to create a thread that focuses on the subject centered around government "entitlements". The left appears to quickly jump on the band wagon of receiving more government "entitlements", as long as they aren't the ones that have to pay for it. Attempting to cut entitlement spending to balance the budget also seems to create quite an angry stir,

There might be some different ways to think about entitlements.

SS and Medicare - to name just two - were part of the postwar mass-consumption economy. Meaning: when the non-wealthy are not bankrupted by parental care, they have more income to consume. (This is called "demand". When an economy lacks sufficient demand, business is forced to layoff workers, which results in even less "demand", which results in more layoffs. This is a toxic spiral).

Again: when entitlements/wages/benefits/publicly subsidized education & transportation are cut, the middle class has less money for consumption. When this happens - when the GOP cuts demand centric policies in order to give tax cuts to the wealthy - household debt increases in order to maintain consumption & living standards.

Please compare postwar consumption (based on wages, benefits, entitlements) to post-Reagan consumption (based increasingly on borrowing). Don't take my word for it; study house hold debt over the past 40 years. By 2005 Americans spent $1.27 for ever $1 earned. They maid up for the failed trickle down with debt.

If you want to get rid of entitlements and place the burden of parental care squarely on the backs of middle class consumers, you will continue to see the economy we have now, i.e., insufficient demand... which means the capitalist has no incentive to invest in domestic jobs.

Your party believes that lowering labor costs (a.k.a. lower wages) and reducing capital's tax obligation to the entitlement system will result increased investment > innovation > jobs > cheaper prices. Here's the problem: after Reagan made this argument in the 80s, we didn't see a sustained utopia of domestic job creation. We saw the steady trickle of jobs overseas. (This is where I side with Perot over the neoliberals: Reagan/Clinton/Bush)

Supply side economics made more sense in the 70s when labor had a real advantage over capital, which it was granted over 40 years of liberal hegemony (which tied American capital very tightly to expensive American labor and expensive environmental regulations. Meaning: there was much more of a need to unburden capital in the 70s). However, once neoliberalism and globalization granted capital the mobility to bypass American labor and regulations - and once neoliberalism replaced our redistributive policies with austerity - we lost the wages/benefits/"social-spending" crucial to our mass-consumption economy. This is when we needed to change our thinking and calibrate middle class consumption to our post-manufacturing job base. We needed to rebuild an economy around the fact that prosperity and economic growth was no longer widely shared. But we didn't. Our politicians took the easy way out and kept promising the middle class rising living standards. (This was part of our Cold War mythos where the nation became obsessed with rising living standards. This was in strategic contrast to the Soviet system where the lower classes lived in squalor. Reagan loved bragging about how well capitalism provided for the poor. Who knew he was going to ship their jobs to communist China) Regardless of the many complicated reasons for why the postwar model of widely shared prosperity dissolved, the fact remains: we tried to keep middle class mass-consumption alive by fiat, that is, we attempted to make-up for falling wages with a credit-card economy, that is, we loaned consumers the money they used to make in wages. We even turned our homes into ATMs in order to make up for the failed trickle down promise. This resulted in a spectacular meltdown. We must now do the impossible: find a way to re-capitalize the middle class consumer in a post-work, post-credit America.

I urge you to see entitlements the way they were originally conceived - as part of a mass-consumption economy which depended on workers being able to afford the cars they produced. This will help you evaluate and criticize the liberal agenda, which is in need of some serious re-tooling. Again, though... If I can move my parent's "off the books" - by paying for their care through increased taxation on the job shippers - I have more money for consumption. And when I have more money for consumption, the job shippers have to ship jobs here. If you want to see the wealthy invest in American jobs, put more money in middle class wallets. Capital will do whatever is necessary to capture that money.

 

[Lakhota]

Rich People Create Jobs!

And five other myths that must die for our economy to live.

By Kevin Drum

For the first four years of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt tackled the Great Depression with inflation, easy monetary policy, and government spending. But in 1937, FDR's advisers persuaded him to reverse gears. After all, interest rates had been close to zero for years, commodity prices were climbing, and fear of inflation was on the rise.

What happened next is now called the "Mistake of 1937" (PDF). Federal spending was cut and monetary policy was tightened up, with disastrous results: GDP immediately began to plummet, and industrial production fell by a third. Within a year everyone had had enough. In 1938 the austerity program was abandoned, and the economy started to grow again.

The truth is that stimulus worked in 1933 and it worked in 2009. So why is our economy still in such bad shape? For one, partly due to political considerations and partly because it was rushed through Congress, the 2009 stimulus wasn't as well designed as it could have been. It was also sold badly. If the bill passed, administration economists predicted, unemployment would peak at 8 percent and then start declining (PDF). But the recession was far worse than the White House originally thought. Unemployment peaked in the double digits, and that's made the stimulus a fat target for Republican critics ever since.

Much More: Rich People Create Jobs! | Mother Jones

 

[Listening]

Al Gore wanted a lock box and was mocked for it.

I think we should be like other industrialized nations and have free healthcare as well as education. A home? No one is suggesting that at all.

If welfare makes one lazy then Israel has to be the laziest of all, but that reasoning doesnt sit well with the Republican worship of Israel.

I believe if you give a man a crutch that doesnt mean he loses the will to walk, it's temporary. Some people are ok with using a crutch for the rest of their lives but that is the exception, not the rule. For some reason tho, repubs like to point at the exceptions as proof of widespread abuse. I.E. voter fraud, welfare drug testing, using abortion as birth control etc.

I'd love to see a study on this.

When President Obama says he can save 500 billion in S.S./Medicare fraud....I have to wonder just what you are talking about.

 

[Listening]

Rich People Create Jobs!

And five other myths that must die for our economy to live.

By Kevin Drum

For the first four years of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt tackled the Great Depression with inflation, easy monetary policy, and government spending. But in 1937, FDR's advisers persuaded him to reverse gears. After all, interest rates had been close to zero for years, commodity prices were climbing, and fear of inflation was on the rise.

What happened next is now called the "Mistake of 1937" (PDF). Federal spending was cut and monetary policy was tightened up, with disastrous results: GDP immediately began to plummet, and industrial production fell by a third. Within a year everyone had had enough. In 1938 the austerity program was abandoned, and the economy started to grow again.

The truth is that stimulus worked in 1933 and it worked in 2009. So why is our economy still in such bad shape? For one, partly due to political considerations and partly because it was rushed through Congress, the 2009 stimulus wasn't as well designed as it could have been. It was also sold badly. If the bill passed, administration economists predicted, unemployment would peak at 8 percent and then start declining (PDF). But the recession was far worse than the White House originally thought. Unemployment peaked in the double digits, and that's made the stimulus a fat target for Republican critics ever since.

Much More: Rich People Create Jobs! | Mother Jones

Blah blah blah blah blah....

Here we go again....

Can anyone present the argument that shows that these not only correlate but are related ? I haven't seen one yet.

I could argue that just because we got to the moon on Nixon's watch, that it was his doing....which it wasn't.

 

[Listening]

You would go along with this: The Government Wants to Hijack Your 401(k) - Money Morning

I don't own a gun, but if this happens I will.....

 

[Lakhota]

Rich People Create Jobs!

And five other myths that must die for our economy to live.

By Kevin Drum

For the first four years of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt tackled the Great Depression with inflation, easy monetary policy, and government spending. But in 1937, FDR's advisers persuaded him to reverse gears. After all, interest rates had been close to zero for years, commodity prices were climbing, and fear of inflation was on the rise.

What happened next is now called the "Mistake of 1937" (PDF). Federal spending was cut and monetary policy was tightened up, with disastrous results: GDP immediately began to plummet, and industrial production fell by a third. Within a year everyone had had enough. In 1938 the austerity program was abandoned, and the economy started to grow again.

The truth is that stimulus worked in 1933 and it worked in 2009. So why is our economy still in such bad shape? For one, partly due to political considerations and partly because it was rushed through Congress, the 2009 stimulus wasn't as well designed as it could have been. It was also sold badly. If the bill passed, administration economists predicted, unemployment would peak at 8 percent and then start declining (PDF). But the recession was far worse than the White House originally thought. Unemployment peaked in the double digits, and that's made the stimulus a fat target for Republican critics ever since.

Much More: Rich People Create Jobs! | Mother Jones

Blah blah blah blah blah....

Here we go again....

Can anyone present the argument that shows that these not only correlate but are related ? I haven't seen one yet.

I could argue that just because we got to the moon on Nixon's watch, that it was his doing....which it wasn't.

Yeah, Sparky, the key word is "austerity"... Now ain't the time for it...

You don't worry about a hemorrhoid when you're having a heart attack...

 

[Listening]

Much More: Rich People Create Jobs! | Mother Jones

Blah blah blah blah blah....

Here we go again....

Can anyone present the argument that shows that these not only correlate but are related ? I haven't seen one yet.

I could argue that just because we got to the moon on Nixon's watch, that it was his doing....which it wasn't.

Yeah, Sparky, the key word is "austerity"... Now ain't the time for it...

You don't worry about a hemorrhoid when you're having a heart attack...

That an opinion, not a fact.

I asked for some connection there Tonto.....make sure you understand the difference.

 

[California Girl]

Al Gore wanted a lock box and was mocked for it.

I think we should be like other industrialized nations and have free healthcare as well as education. A home? No one is suggesting that at all.

If welfare makes one lazy then Israel has to be the laziest of all, but that reasoning doesnt sit well with the Republican worship of Israel.

I believe if you give a man a crutch that doesnt mean he loses the will to walk, it's temporary. Some people are ok with using a crutch for the rest of their lives but that is the exception, not the rule. For some reason tho, repubs like to point at the exceptions as proof of widespread abuse. I.E. voter fraud, welfare drug testing, using abortion as birth control etc.

Free healthcare?

Which country provides 'free' healthcare? None. Nadda. Zip. It is 'free at the point of delivery', which means you pay for it, moron.

And, you should research the current state of those 'free' healthcare plans. Because each and every one of them is in serious shit... including the French system (which is one that I happen to think could be revamped to work in the US). It's this 'pie in the sky' attitude of those who support UHC that frustrates me. You seem to have no real clue about the monstrosity of a system that these plans end up as.

 

[ShaklesOfBigGov]

Coming across these articles, apparently Americans (like an addiction) can't help but seek another "HIT" that's offered by the Federal Government. Have we allowed ourselves to depend too much on the Federal Government? How can we break this growing dependency before we end up like Greece with out of control spending?

More Americans Tapping Into Entitlement Programs Swells Budget Deficit
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
BY DON MILLER, Associate Editor, Money Morning

As many U.S. citizens continue to rail against the ballooning budget deficit, the reality is that most Americans are unwilling to swallow the bitter pill it will take to tame it.

Perhaps that's because nearly half of all Americans live in a household in which someone receives government benefits, more than at any time in history, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

At the same time, the number of American households not paying federal income taxes has grown to an estimated 45% in 2010, up from 39% five years ago, according to the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research organization.
http://moneymorning.com/2010/09/20/budget-deficit-2/

A Nation of Government Dependents
June 10, 2011

. . . The numbers are staggering. According to a Census Bureau report for the first quarter of 2009, of a little more than 300 million Americans, nearly 139 million -- or 46.2% of us -- were receiving benefits from one or more federal programs.
The largest programs are familiar ones: Social Security (46,509,000), Medicaid (70,818,000), Medicare (42,566,000) and the Food Stamp program (36,096,000).
Smaller, less familiar programs such as the Railroad Retirement Program, veterans compensation, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, housing subsidies, Federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Women's, Infants and Children benefits (WIC) and other means-tested assistance programs covered more than 60 million individuals, many redundantly.
There are far more recipients of food stamps today than there were two years ago, and Baby Boomers are just beginning to swell the rolls of Social Security and Medicare.

But some of the large groups receiving government benefits aren't included in the Census Bureau report. The Bureau's list does not include tax breaks for industries, businesses, and individuals. And it overlooks things like taxpayer subsidies for farmers, ethanol refiners, and wind energy, among other politically favored recipients.

Year 2009 recipients of government benefits included those who took advantage of the horrendously wasteful "Cash for Clunkers" program, the energy-efficient windows replacement scheme in the failed Stimulus program, and other governmental boondoggles.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/a_nation_of_government_dependents.html

 

[JoeB131]

Why do liberals desire to see huge cuts in military spending cut, but don't want to see any government entitlements like social security touched or reformed into personal investment accounts? If the national debt and spending must be reduced, we must look at entitlements like social security.

Workers didn't contribute to defense/military like they paid into Social Security and Medicare their entire working lives via payroll taxes. So how can they be compared for spending cuts?

But the thing is, it doesn't work this way.

The guy with the infantilism fetish didn't pay into it for his entire life. he just claimed his weird fetish was a disability, and some bureaucrat signed off on giving him a check.

It would work that way if Medicare and Social Security only paid back what you pay into it, or a reasonable return. But the fact is, if you retire, you've gotten everything you've paid in by the time you hit 72, and the average lifespan is 78 now. Which means for six years, you are living off the rest of us.

The problem with entitlements is that we call them "entitlements". We should call them "charity", with the understanding you are living off the rest of us.

We should replace welfare with workfare for the able-bodied. We should means-test social security.

 

[editec]

When do "entitlements" go too far?

When I don't approve of them.

 

[Listening]

When do "entitlements" go too far?

When I don't approve of them.

And that means you agree that if 50.1 percent of voting America decides to dump Social Security....that will be O.K. ?

 

[editec]

When do "entitlements" go too far?

When I don't approve of them.

And that means you agree that if 50.1 percent of voting America decides to dump Social Security....that will be O.K. ?

I guess it would mean that if I was personally 50.1% of the population.

As far as I can tell I am roughly 1/300,000,000th of the poulation.

Show me an example of an entitlement that you object to.

I'll tell you whether or not it troubles me.

 

[ClosedCaption]

Hey I'm doing pretty good if the only thing that the repubs disagreed with is my use of the word free

 

[Navy1960]

Again, Social Security is one of the largest single debt holders of US debt, and as pointed out of all the issues facing this nation at the moment Social Security is NOT one of them.

Social Security is prohibited from spending any money beyond what it has in its trust fund. This means that it cannot lawfully contribute to the federal budget deficit, since every penny that it pays out must have come from taxes raised through the program or the interest garnered from the bonds held by the trust fund.

The one exception to this rule is the roughly $120 billion being credited to the Trust Fund in 2011 to offset the lost payroll tax revenue due to the 2 percentage point reduction in the payroll tax. Apart from this special 1-year exception approved by Congress at the end of last year, Social Security is literally prohibited under the law from adding to the deficit

FactCheck Gets It Wrong on Social Security and the Deficit | CEPR Blog

The facts are that in the last 10 years our nation spent, 1.28 Trillion dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan, 750 Billion on one stimulus, 700 plus Billion on another, 100 plus billion on Medicare Part D, Auto bail outs 70 plus biliion, all this without raising taxes in fact we have fought 2 wars without any combined sacrifice on the part of every American. In fact with cutting taxes in this time period and war spending and economic spending, then to turn around and say " yes its Social Security" is basically to ignore the obvious rather than attempt to fix whats really wrong. Yes Social Security can be adjusted somewhat, I have always thought that those with high incomes should be means tested for both Medicare and Social Security.

 

[DiamondDave]

Entitlements... both corporate and individual... go too far the moment they come into existence

 

[JWBooth]

When the beer truck backs up to my front door twice a week, and it is not on my dime, we will definitely have a sign.

They went too far when the first one was proposed into law.