Reading from some Facebook postings, it appears we can eliminate the debt and lower our taxes by getting rid of “welfare”. They seem to lump all social programs into welfare, like TANF, Medicaid, Obamacare, food stamps, public housing, etc. In other words, all those things poor lazy people “get” from our high taxes while we’re working so hard.
Granted, it’s a pretty large brush, but I’ve always been curious about how much of an impact this has. Most people who post that I’m sure haven’t thought that less services may mean crime or starvation or even whether it’s state vs federal. It’s more those picture-quotes complaining about “Obama=Socialist Kenyan Muslim Tax-raiser who runs up deficit to give his voters free stuff. Like if you agree”.
I like those little tables that show the nation’s finances in household terms. “If your family has an income of $50,000, your debt is $100,000. Taking out all welfare would only be saving ____.”
No cite, but I’ve always heard/read that transfer payments are an insignificant part of the federal budget—one half of one percent, or something like that. I expect someone to pop in momentarily to tell me that I’m an idiot and back it up with quantitative proof, but for what it’s worth, that’s what I’ve been led to believe.
Welfare ended in 1996. Have you noticed a great difference, other than the Debt getting larger?
America has the lowest overall taxes of any Western Democracy, unless you include Turkey- we’re about the same. Australia & Japan are slightly higher, while most of Europe is way higher, even as much as twice.
Medicare is supposed to pay for itself. Yes, currently it does’t but that can be fixed. Getting rid of Medicare would lower your income taxes by less than 1.5%- that’s how much tax you pay for it. Obamacare is also supposed to pay for itself, that remains to be seen.
Food stamps, etc cost maybe 1%. Less than 1000th of the deficit.
Since you’re painting with the broadest of brushes, can’t you just look up the US spending budget, see where the percentages are, and say “If we eliminated Medicare, our taxes go down by 22%” or “If we eliminate all Defense spending, our taxes go down by 19%”, as I glomed from this Wikipedia chart – File:U.S. Federal Spending.png - Wikipedia
Granted, the money going in is less than half derived from individual income taxes – File:U.S. Federal Receipts - FY 2007.png - Wikipedia But still, it just lets you know, this whole concept is way too complicated for the facebook crowd.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, “Obamacare” has enough savings and new revenue provisions that is saves the government money. It is, after all, the free-market solution attempting to achieve universal health care by making everyone buy into private health insurance. If you are one of those rich people being soaked by ‘welfare’, then you must already have private health care which means repealing Obamacare would have no effect on your health care costs, but it will increase the Federal budget, and thus, your share of it.
Eradication of other anti-poverty programs (and remember, Social Security is an anti-poverty program keeping millions of elderly from living in poverty) would mean the state or local governments would have to step in, thus raising your state and local taxes. Or, you could just let the millions in poverty roam the streets begging from you everywhere you turn and forming gangs leading to armed rebellion. That’s bound to increase your taxes for all that extra policing and jails.
The largest programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) together cost about 1,500 billion dollars a year.
[ul]
[li]Social security pays retirement benefits to about 50 million people and disability benefits to about 10 million people.[/li][li]Medicare pays for about 50 million retired and disabled people.[/li][li]Medicaid pays for further 50 million people, mostly low-income children.[/li][/ul]
Therefore, getting rid of all social programs would seriously piss of at least 100 million people.
Parts of Social Security may be considered welfare, because they are subsidizing the retirement incomes of the poor. There are three income brackets for Social Security: up until your average wage was around $800 a month, you get 85% of your average wage each month when you retire. This works out to be a lot more than you put in. (Then, every dollar after that, you get back 35% a month, which works out almost equal, then when you get into nearly upper middle class territory it drops down to 15% which means that they are paying in more than they are taking out.)
But I don’t know the dollar amount of this subsidy. It’s well below 1/4 of Social Security payments, but still is a good chunk of change.
(But it’s a chunk of change that I think we should still pay, because it’s in our social contract to do so: people are working in expectations of getting SS, and it is difficult to find a job when you reach SS age and some are too frail to work at jobs which they are qualified for. Far better IMO would be to cut down on SS payments to the upper brackets, and leave the lower brackets alone. And the well off retirees would still get at least $800 a month.)
The presumption is of course that people don’t work because they get money from the government for not working. Even assuming this is the primary motivation for most (healthy) freeloaders, why would they start woring, and who will hire them? Unless, of course you eliminate minimum wage laws and we are allowed to simply hire field workers to live in shanties out back and pick our crops in return for just enough food to stay alive…
IMHO (wrong forum) a large number of thes people are “unemployable”. ANyone who has experience managing a minimum wage establishment will tell you the world is full of people who just don’t “get it”. They don’t show up to work on time or at all, they always feel sick or hurt themselves, even when working they are a danger to themselves and others - not to mention customer service, politeness, or interest in the job being such an alien concept they can’t even fake it. Then, at least half are in some way so ill they cannot work; heck, the cities are full of people so ill-equipped to deal with life they can’t even maintain a permanent address for long enough to actually collect welfare. Single mothers, oddly enough, do not mainly have children for the joy of collecting welfare. You expect them to work when they have no (subsidized) daycare for their children?
Of course, you think the crime rate is a problem now (actually, the lowest it’s been in decades) wait til the streets are full of people looking for simply a meal. WHy do you think third world countries and historical fiction are full of beggars in the street? That’s what you get if there are no government handouts.
Of course, do tax breaks to corporations to build a factory in your state instead of next state over count as welfare? Corporations can be the biggest corporate welfare bums…
The other thing that people rarely think about is what happens to this money after it’s paid out. People on very low incomes tend to spend every single penny they get; they don’t hoard it in savings accounts or investments, unlike wealthier people. So it goes back into the local economy, which helps preserve other people’s jobs. Some of it is also taken back into government coffers more directly in the form of sales tax and through the income/corporation tax paid by the businesses where the welfare recipient spends their money. There’s a knock-on effect on all this from welfare cuts, even before you get into things like increased crime rates. The idea that cutting a certain amount out of the welfare system will *save *the government that amount simply isn’t accurate.
Dealing with the resulting levels of elevated crime, political unrest, economic disruption, public health problems, and starvation would likely prove a lot more costly than any savings that would be made.
Really? I work for my state’s assistance bureau, so don’t tell my boss. I’ve got him convinced I’m working all day.
Welfare didn’t end in 1996. Laws got passed to limit the amount of time that people could get cash assistance, and added employment requirements, but welfare is alive and well.
My experience with welfare cases in Canada (I assume the USA is pretty similar) is that the whole thing is a game, and the recipients are not so stupid that they don’t know how to play it and get maximum payout. The hard-core problem people, you don’t want as your employees anyway, even if they could perform or fake it for a few days.
Everyone keeps repeating the mantra “no welfare any more” but really? All those single mothers and kids are starving on the streets? The unemployed after their Unemployment runs out (if they qualified) are out on their butt, living in Salvation Army shelters and eating at soup kitchens? Or are the public housing projects just as full as they ever were?
According to USGovernmentSpending.com. For 2012 Welfare cost 752 billion dollars out of a 3.7 trillion dollar budget. Medicare and Social Security are not classified as welfare but Medicaid is. Defined this way Welfare is 20% of the federal budget. Without it the budget would almost be in balance. So if welfare was eliminated taxes could not go down, but they would not have to rise so much in the future.
