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.