Taxpaying base decreases, taxpayer benefits increase. You do the math and decide if this is a sustainable system, the look back at pre-collapse USSR.
September 1995. I had just started working as an aide to a U.S. Senator. A co-worker of mine was sharing some of the ins and outs of the job with me when he pointed out the following:
The thing to remember about constituents is that they want as many government benefits as they can get- without paying for them.
I never forgot that conversation, and was reminded of it while watching the news last night from my family's home in southeast Wisconsin. From Sara Murray yesterday afternoon, writing on the Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics blog:
Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008.
The share of people relying on government benefits has reached a historic high, in large part from the deep recession and meager recovery, but also because of the expansion of government programs over the years…
High unemployment and increased reliance on government programs has also shrunk the nation's share of taxpayers. Some 46.4% of households will pay no federal income tax this year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. That's up from 39.9% in 2007, the year the recession began.
(Editor's note: Italics added for emphasis)
48.5% of the population lives in a household that receives some government benefit. 46.4% of households will pay no federal income tax this year. Constituents are getting what they wanted. Or are they?
Source:
Murray, Sara. "Nearly Half of U.S. Lives in Household Receiving Government Benefit." Real Time Economics. 5 Oct. 2011. (http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/10/05/nearly-half-of-households-receive-some-government-benefit/). 6 Oct. 2011.
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