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If that is the case, then allow me to make the following suggestion.
No one is happy about the dependency that too many Americans have for government supplied, not the clients...
I have to disagree, here. There are GENERATIONS of Americans that are perfectly content to live on welfare, and game the entitlement benefits systems for as much as they can possibly get.
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How do we get people working instead of having to rely on government subsidies?
We can start with government policies that foster economic growth. Unfortunately, Obama, his admin, and the current Dem Congress are the wrong people to look to for that. Remember Obama's economic advisor, Christina Romer? She's no longer with the Obama administration. She resigned, in part because her research found that letting the Bush tax credits expire would have a highly contractionary effect on the economy.
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What the Romers found is that exogenous tax increases, such as will occur with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, “… are highly contractionary. The effects are strongly significant, highly robust, and much larger than those obtained using broader measures of tax changes.”
Here is a strong argument, based on solid academic research, for extending the Bush tax cuts, and not letting them expire, made by one of President Obama’s top economic advisers.
Romer’s Research: Expiration of Bush Tax Cuts Will Be Highly Contractionary | The Beacon (http://www.independent.org/blog/index.php?p=6958 - broken link)
Further, it is known that for every $1 taxed out of the economy and spent by the government, $1.10 worth of economic growth is destroyed. The government destroys more in economic growth than it spends. http://mercatus.org/sites/default/fi...nd%20taxes.pdf
But there's Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, insisting on raising taxes on those who pay the most, thereby causing an inordinant amount of additional contractionary effect, and lifting government spending to unprecedentedly high levels, thereby destroying unprecedentedly high levels of economic growth.
Short answer to how do we get people working instead of relying on government handouts? Remove the financial incentives to not work. And remove the party whose policies destroy economic growth, from office.
Grow the economy and fewer people live below the poverty level.
Correct. See my post, above, for why the wrong party is in office and in control of the country if the goal is economic growth.
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Provide a way for "Hard-core" unemployed to get job-training. If they are on public assistance make it a condition for them to continue to receive public assistance. Provide limited tax incentives to companies to hire workers that complete these programs.
The problem is that same people that are b*tching about the poor aren't willing to provide the funding for job training programs.
On the contrary. I posted the CBO's IRS data on the average total effective federal tax rates by income group, which verifies the relative accuracy of the federal income and payroll tax amount listed in the chart.
Here it is, again:
http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2009/effective_rates.pdf (broken link)
Do you know anything about adjusted gross income and how it is calculated? You do know that taxable income is not the same amount as your gross income, right? The hypothetical family here would not be taxed on 60,000. Every dependent counts as a $3650 exemption which is subtracted from the gross to calculate AGI. There are also other deductions (mentioned earlier), including the interest paid for your home loan, education expenses, student loan interest, 401K contributions, medical expenses and then there are credits such as the child tax and dependent care credits that I mentioned. Again, there is no way that a middle class family with two children, making 60K is going to pay that much. By the time all the exemptions, deductions and credits are applied, their federal taxes would be closer to $3000 and possibly less or in the negative depending on deductions. The tax rate for Medicare is 1.45% and SSI is 6.2% - still nowhere near 13,000.
If you want to bash the working poor, you really didn't have to bring the middle class into this. It's nothing but a lame attempt to get people to turn against the poor as if they are being dooped. In case you haven't noticed, only the usual people who agree with you are agreeing with you here. You haven't turned anyone on to anything besides the right's obsession with and hatred of the poor.
Do you know anything about adjusted gross income and how it is calculated? You do know that taxable income is not the same amount as your gross income, right?
I'm not sure why you're continuing to argue. The IRS provides the actual data on total effective tax rates. Here it is, again:
http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2009/effective_rates.pdf (broken link)
If you want to bash the working poor, you really didn't have to bring the middle class into this.
I didn't, the comparison chart did. Why shouldn't people know the truth that many of those taking welfare entitlement benefits are making out better than those who pay the taxes that pay for those benefits?
Here is my problem with your approach to the subject
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Originally Posted by InformedConsent
I have to disagree, here. There are GENERATIONS of Americans that are perfectly content to live on welfare, and game the entitlement benefits systems for as much as they can possibly get.
There is generational reliance on welfare, but to argue that they are content to do so is just a matter of your own personal conjecture, and supposition which is colored by your personal world view which isn't supported by any other data.
Second, there are individuals who "game the system" and to suppose otherwise would fly in the face of human greed, avarice and creativity not unlike any other economic endeavor as practiced by their more wealthy fellow citizens. But to argue, as you do, that this is the pervasive attitude of welfare recipients, many of whom don't even understand the basics of the system much less how to game it, is again based upon anecdotal evidence, conjecture and supposition.
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We can start with government policies that foster economic growth. Unfortunately, Obama, his admin, and the current Dem Congress are the wrong people to look to for that. Remember Obama's economic advisor, Christina Romer? She's no longer with the Obama administration.
Please, please spare me from using this topic to launch into one of your patented partisan debates. The problem of welfare and poverty has been with us through economic growth, Republican and Democrats for more than 70 years. Before that it was just a simple issue of Dickensesque neglect.
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Short answer to how do we get people working instead of relying on government handouts?
Here is an economic fact, one that I once had the opportunity to teach Jeb Bush, economist consider full employment to be 3 to 4 percent. This means that at the height of economic activity some 15,000 or so people will be out of a job and actively looking for one. Of course this means that there is an ancillary group who for one reason or another have completely dropped out of the labor market. So, even if you passed a magic wand across the nation instilling the Protestant work ethic in every man woman and child, the economy would not have enough jobs to provide one for every person seeking one.
When you Google, "corporate welfare" you certainly aren't going to be lacking for something to read. In any of these threads initiated from the perspective of self righteousness coupled with a vitriolic contempt for the poor it seems they always get bogged down with a bunch of back and forth over how we should either kick the crap out of the poor or show some empathy toward them. There is a different perspective that would require a more in depth look at the problems we face when trying to figure which direction we need to take if we expect to solve some of our larger social problems.
Full employment. Sounds good on the face of it, of course the odds of ever seeing this situation or anything close to it coming to pass in America are slim, mechanized processes, global flattening of the worlds workforce (offshoring), elimination of stratified work functions (doing more work with less people), all these factors enter into the bigger picture of our employment dilemma. Of course the amount of study one would need to do in order to have a more scholarly understanding of these social problems is beyond the scope of most in the working/middle class. It is this realization that allows us to see the danger in having some self righteous radio shouter do our thinking for us. Welfare is a huge problem for us all, and those on the low end of welfare are not always happy to be marginalized in this way, some adapt and become reliant on the state for their survival with little care for the loss of self esteem and social status that accompanies their situation. Some are born into the quagmire of state dependence and perpetuate the system by following the parents into the same paradigm by having children early and becoming one more adult on the dole.
Now the other side of the welfare coin, corporate welfare, can be looked at with the same sense of head shaking amazement, why in the world do these large ultra wealthy multi nationals need a handout? Can't they be happy with a decent income to the extent that they don't need to reach into our collective pockets to the tune of hundreds of billions a year? This kind of broad approach to the welfare question may be the key to understanding the government's role in shoring up what we like to call a capitalistic economy, but on closer scrutiny we see it really is far different from the classic economic construct of theoretical capitalism, it is in truth an inverted type of socialism wherein the money gravitates to the top rather than the socialist system we learned about in school that distributes the wealth over a broad populace. All in all, one fact remains, the poor get a mere subsistence living while the government's largesse to the rich allows them to get richer, so if one form of welfare can be eliminated let it be that which serves those who really aren't in need.
Just a related thought that might help folks better understand the 'entitlement' problem ... or perhaps, how we got there. Years ago, the government give-away programs were called things like "welfare, charity, relief, etc). An entire generation resisted going on "charity" because of the stigma. Most people would (and did) rather work than take "charity."
Then along came new, politically correct labels that changed nothing, but made everyone feel better about taking "ENTITLEMENTS" --- After all, if one is 'entitled' to something, they shouldn't feel any stigma about taking it. In fact, people should literally fight to get what they are 'entitled' tol
Today, we have a large percentage of an entire generation getting "entitlements" -- and feeling like they are somehow being cheated ... if they don't get absolutely everything they are "entitled" to.
I'm all in favor of helping people who need help, but after working with folks in the system for many years, I see the abuses, dependency and ridiculous costs (to everyone else) that grow out of an "entitlement" mentality. Let's go back to calling it welfare and stop making it more financially beneficial to take it, than to work.
Here is my problem with your approach to the subject
There is generational reliance on welfare, but to argue that they are content to do so is just a matter of your own personal conjecture, and supposition which is colored by your personal world view which isn't supported by any other data.
BS. Show me the welfare recipients protesting the fact that they have to take goverment handouts. There aren't any.
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Second, there are individuals who "game the system" and to suppose otherwise would fly in the face of human greed, avarice and creativity not unlike any other economic endeavor as practiced by their more wealthy fellow citizens.
Yes, it is unlike other economic endeavors in that the welfare recipients do not contribute to the cost of maintaining our country's society and infrastructure, AND they expect others to accept a forced downgrade in their standard of living to foot the welfare recipients' bills via the taxes they have to pay.
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Here is an economic fact, one that I once had the opportunity to teach Jeb Bush, economist consider full employment to be 3 to 4 percent. This means that at the height of economic activity some 15,000 or so people will be out of a job and actively looking for one.
People change jobs. Businesses go bankrupt. That does not provide a rationalization or excuse for the government to reward failure and punish success to the point that GENERATIONS of Americans are perfectly content and conditioned to live off of the productivity of others while contributing little to nothing themselves.
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