By Tyler Drusden
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."
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" at
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