A newspaper story several years ago reported about an elementary school teacher who held elections in his class.
The students picked their candidates — one little boy competing against one little girl.
The little boy stood up before the class and shared his ideas for changes that would improve their lives. The little girl stood up and promised that everyone who voted for her would get ice cream.
The little girl won, hands down.
Maybe it’s a cute story about 10-year-olds. But it’s far less cute if we consider that the political reality in our country today is not much different.
Two-thirds of federal spending, which now takes almost one-fourth of our GDP, are transfer payments.
As opposed to federal spending that involves direct payments to individuals or firms — like salaries or purchases made by the Department of Defense — transfer payments are payments that are automatically transferred to one set of citizens out of the federal budget, as well as funds that the federal government transfers to the states.
We’re talking about programs such as Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, refundable tax credits, Medicaid, housing, welfare and transit.
These are automatic, mandatory transfers, which, as a percent of federal spending, have increased by about a factor of 5 since 1950.
Take Social Security and Medicare away from retired people? Some of us paid into it for 50 or more years, we have skin in the game. Better to get rid of the programs that focus on illegals or DEI or other woke crap. Pissing on retired citizens is not a good idea.
“Edited to remove personal reverence”
Thank you Fren… That was very well stated and I totally agree.. I have also have paid into social security and Medicare for a similar period … was going to write something in the comments but got pulled away for a short and you beat me to it… (didn’t have room in the heading)
I started out a little emotional and attacked the messenger. Thankfully I quickly came to my senses. Always better to keep emotion out of the discussion but this one is a hot subject I guess. All good. Unfortunately too many get benefits that never paid into the system. Nothing new there.
Totally understood… When so many are shamelessly taking what they never earned and believe it’s their RIGHT, it stirs a great deal of Angst and even Anger in these Old Bones of mine…