Tag Archives: Dependence

Commentary

Is the United States of America becoming a European welfare state?

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Rep. Paul Ryan

Rep. Paul Ryan, writing at Real Clear Politics.

Excerpt:

…an eye-opening study by the Tax Foundation, a reliable and non-partisan research group, tells us that in 2004, 20 percent of US households were getting about 75 percent of their income from the federal government. In other words, one out of five families in America is already government dependent. Another 20 percent were receiving almost 40 percent of their income from federal programs, so another one in five has become government reliant for their livelihood.

All told, 60 percent – three out of five households in America – were receiving more government benefits and services (in dollar value) than they were paying back in taxes. The Tax Foundation estimates that President Obama’s budget last year will raise this “net government inflow” from 60 to 70 percent. Look at it this way: three out of ten American families are supporting themselves plus – through government – supplying or supplementing the incomes of seven other households. As a permanent arrangement, this is individually unfair, politically inequitable, and economically dangerous.

[…]Just to return to where we were at the end of 2007, 8.4 million jobs have to be created. To reduce unemployment to its pre-crisis level of 5 per cent by the end of President Obama’s term, our economy needs to create 247,000 new jobs per month. But we are headed in the wrong direction … except in one field: the government is growing at breakneck pace in expanding federal payrolls.

Although millions of private sector jobs have been lost since the recession began, Washington is on track to add about 275,000 more people to the public payrolls – a whopping 15 percent increase. And we aren’t talking minimum wages here. More federal workers make over $100,000 than those earning $40,000 or less. The average government worker’s salary in 2009 was 21 percent higher than private sector salaries. The average federal worker’s compensation package, including benefits, was nearly $120,000 in 2008, twice the private sector at $60,000. One study shows the private sector benefit package averages $9,900 while the federal package averages almost $41,000. Now the Administration wants Congress to privilege federal workers by writing off their unpaid student loans after ten years. People in productive private sector jobs would keep paying for twenty years. Progressivists would really like everyone to work for the government.

Once you start to pay 50-60 percent of your income to your neighbors who are not working, you don’t try to have a family any more. What is the point? Working harder to provide for them doesn’t get you anything.

Polemics

MUST-READ: Does Obamacare encourage men to marry and start families?

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Consider this article from the New Ledger. (H/T ECM)

First the video of Democrat Senator Max Baucus explaining what health care reform was really about.

That’s the truth that no one would speak of until the bill had passed. It’s not a bill about health care – it’s a bill about redistributing wealth from rich to poor. The bill’s whole purpose is to capitalize on people’s fears to gain the power to equalize life outcomes by moving money around.

That’s what government-run health care is – it reduces the costs of risky behavior for some people by pushing them onto hard-working people who pay taxes. Those who need abortions, sex changes and in vitro get paid, those who work the hardest and live the cleanest pay. The way to get paid is to engage in risky and/or immoral behavior, and the way to pay is to engage in hard work – like starting your own business to create jobs. Those are the incentives that Democrats create with the government takeover of health care.

And the New Ledger article explains what it means to have the government take care of you.

Excerpt:

America was built on the belief that the dreams of each of us could be achieved through hard work, self-determination, and persistence. Immigrants from around the globe came to these shores to find refuge from the very governmental policies this administration is imposing on its citizens. Many an American has fought and died for our right to live in a nation of self-starters, where your hard work would allow you to provide a better life for your children, and grand-children, where you and your family were able to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Senator Baucus’ admission reveals the true nature of these policies – create an America where the incentive to succeed is squashed. Those who work tirelessly to provide for their family are not rewarded for their efforts, but penalized. In the Democrat’s America, those who sit lazily on their duff, are the ones who are rewarded.

This approach will not lift up the poor, but enslave them to the tit of federal leviathan. Without an education, or job training, or dream, Americans will be able to sit, aloof in front of their television and drown their sorrows in Big Macs and beer, still assured of their free health care and their government check. They will not earn that money after a hard day’s work…

The Democrats want people who work hard to have less money of their own. That makes it harder for hard-workers to execute their own life plan. So, it means that people who work hard will have to accept what the government gives them instead – public schools, public hospitals, public libraries, public universities, etc. That way everyone will be equal. Equally dependent on the government.

But these public facilities may not always be the best for Christians who have Christian life plans. And if you think that a secular government is going to give you what you need to raise a Christian family, think again. They’ll put Kevin Jennings, Planned Parenthood, the SEIU and Al Gore in the school to teach your children about same-sex marriage, abortion, socialism and global warming. And you’ll have no money left over to resist them.

What did the Republicans do instead?

Take a look at these graphs from a recent Powerline post.

Per Capita Income
Per Capita Income
Employment Rate
Employment Rate

Republicans want people to get their own jobs and to earn their own income. Pay their own way. Dream their own dreams. And to achieve those dreams. This is a lot better for Christians with a plan to do things in a way that honors Christ.

What do these graphs say to marriage-minded men?

These graphs are a green light to a man. They say to a man: “MARRY AND HAVE CHILDREN NOW”. They say that the harder you work, the more you will be able to provide for your family. That it is safe to take the responsibility for a wife and children, because it is in your power to protect them and provide for them. They mean that a man has nothing to worry about – that he should stop worrying about the future and just go for it! And this isn’t just a blind faith that things will work out – there are reasons to believe that things will work out. More income and more jobs means that things are more likely to work out.

What do 77% of young, unmarried women really want?

77% of young, unmarried women voted for Obama. They don’t really want husbands to protect and provide for them – because they voted for less personal income and fewer jobs. That’s what they’ve voted for, anyway. If they didn’t want to dissuade men from marrying, then maybe they shouldn’t have voted for Obama.

Related: MUST-READ: 20 reasons why the health care reform bill is a disaster.

Commentary

Government-run health care is really about redistributing wealth

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Article from radical leftist Jonathan Chait of the extremely biased New Republic. (H/T Just One Minute via ECM)

Excerpt:

The single most popular health care idea emanating from the right is to allow Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines. What a stupid idea, making people buy insurance only within their own state!

[…]Now, think about this for a minute. I doubt her precise figure, but let’s grant the premise that young healthy people could save a lot of money from such an arrangement. Why is that? Is it that out-of-state insurance companies are that much more efficient? No, of course not — profit and overhead don’t account for anywhere close to two-thirds of insurance premiums.

The young and healthy would save money because they’d find an insurance plan from a state with very limited regulation. Say, those plans would operate in a state that doesn’t require insurance to cover any medical conditions that are unlikely to afflict a young, healthy 25-year-old. What happens is that the health care industry becomes like the credit card industry. Some small state realizes it can attract a lot of business its way by winning the race to the regulatory bottom.

So then, effectively, we’ve almost completely eliminated all regulations on health insurance. Conservatives will say that’s great. And certainly the healthy 25-year-old would be better off. But, of course, the effect of those regulations was to force insurers to cover medical conditions that older or less healthy people have. As a result, all the young healthy people have split, and costs on everybody else go up. The young and healthy are paying higher rates because of these regulations. But the same regulations let the old and sick pay lower rates — and they’re the people who have the biggest trouble buying insurance as it is. Allowing interstate sale of insurance isn’t just a non-solution, it’s a massive anti-solution, worsening all the problems of the status quo.

Got that? The whole point of socialized medicine is to force people to limit their choice of coverage to only in-state plans so that young people just starting their careers have to pay more for coverages that they don’t need. And retired people who have had all their lives to make money and save for their own health care get health care for less. The health care of the elderly needs to be subsidized via government-controlled wealth redistribution. Isn’t it amazing that young people vote so overwhelmingly for Obama?