Number
of the Week: Half of U.S. Lives in Household Getting Benefits
Phil Izzo, Wall Street Journal, 26 May 2012
Phil Izzo, Wall Street Journal, 26 May 2012
49.1%: Percent of the
population that lives in a household where at least one member received some
type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011.
Food stamps
are received in 15% of households, social
security 16%, and 26% have someone on Medicaid.
Only 2% (lower than I would have thought) have someone receiving
unemployment benefits.
It is
important to note that a lot of people feel that they are “entitled” to their
social security benefits as they are only withdrawing the money they put
in. This is an inaccurate
summation. Typically people withdraw
every cent of money that they have contributed within the first four years of
receiving benefits. The system was not
setup to have the majority of people drawing from it for extended periods of
time.
Not
surprisingly it is the Social Security and Medicaid benefits that people are
most reluctant to cut.
5 comments:
Nor was it designed to have so much of the population at the receiving end of it. They didn't think through such social evils as abortion and feminism when the created Social Security.
Some of the families are double dipping. Like getting food stamps along with SSI disabilities. Might skewer the %.
GK
PP: I don't know the numbers well enough to know how either would influence SS. Presumably more women in the workforce, making more money, was not the problem, but the overall flattening of real wages likely was.
GK: It was based on census data, so while I am sure the numbers are far from perfect, the double dipping is factored in.
I am going to have to look at the SS payoff versus Medicaid-care payoff. I was just reading something that indicated that is was Medicaid-care that was the big bargain for retirees.
More women working in the short term but much smaller families and so much of the potential work force left on the clinic floor. I doubt anyone even considered the long term effects of feminism and legal abortion or reduced family sizes.
PP: So feminism and abortion are the issue? Not increased longevity? Population growth is very much a mixed blessing, and even second tier countries (like Mexico) have started to reach zero populationg growth.
Mixing moral arguments with effect-based arguments is in my opinion a mistake. With all the moving pieces within a complex society, you don't have a prayer of making a convincing argument based on numbers, but you do a very good job of muddying up the moral argument.
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