Why We Have The Entitlement Programs We Have
20th August 2012
We currently make 60% of our Federal expenditures towards wealth-spreading government programs; Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other entitlements. In FY10, we spent $2Tr on those programs alone. We spent $1.5Tr on every other activity the Federal Government engages in.
Some people think that’s not enough, that 90% of what the government spends ought to be on benefits programs.
August 20th, 2012 at 19:27
“make The United States a nation that is more equalitarian and hostile to individual freedom, innovation and initiative” False dichotomy.
What makes one the necessary antithesis of the other? Why can’t we have individual freedom, innovation, and initiative, and still be ‘equalitarian’? (I don’t think that’s a word, actually, but let it stand.)
I’ve never understood how the two categories became mutually exclusinve in the minds of the Right.
But to the question: I notice that they take fiscal 2010 as their baseline, as if that was a ‘normal’ year. Never mind the fact that lack of jobs affects both the unemployment segment of expenditures (16% in 2010) and Medicare/Medicaid, which is income-based (22% in 2010). If the employment picture picked up, both of those numbers would go down. So the real answer to the question why we have the entitlement programs we do is that the Bush policies–or lack thereof–allowed the investment banks to drive the economy off a cliff. Without the collapse, we wouldn’t be in the shape we’re in.
Of course, we could always just let the unemployed and poor starve to death. Which is really what the conservatives want, in the end.