"Welfare" - The Great Delusion

[Tylerdurden]

We have long argued that at its core, modern society, at least on a mathematical basis - the one which ultimately trumps hopium every single time - is fatally flawed due to the existence, and implementation, of the concept of modern "welfare" - an idea spawned by Otto von Bismarck in the 1870s, and since enveloped the globe in various forms of transfer payments which provide the illusion of a social safety net, dangles the carrot of pension, health, and retirement benefits, and in turn converts society into a collage of blank faces, calm as Hindu cows. Alas, the cows will promptly become enraged bulls once they realize that all that has been promised to them in exchange for their docility and complacency has... well... vaporized. It is at that point that the final comprehension would dawn, that instead of a Welfare State, it has been, as Bill Buckler terms it, a Hardship State all along. Below we present the latest views from the captain of The Privateer on what the insoluble dilemma of the welfare state is, and what the key problems that the status quo will face with its attempts at perpetuating this lie.
From The Privateer

The Great Delusion - “Welfare”

For the best part of the last two decades, it has been accepted as an indisputable fact even by the mainstream media that the two great pillars of the welfare state - medicare and social security - will break the government which offers them. Today, every nation in the world makes at least some pretense of providing “welfare” to its citizens. Since the “developed” (or “rich”) nations are those where these systems are most “developed”, these are the nations most at risk of crumbling under their burdens.

Welfare has many antonyms, but “hardship” is particularly apt in this context. Wikipedia’s entry on “welfare” ends like this: “... this term replaces “charity” as it was known for thousands of years, being the act of providing for those who temporarily or permanently could not provide for themselves.” As usual, the defining characteristic is missed. Charity is voluntary. “Welfare” as practised by government is compulsory. This makes the two terms opposites. It also brings about the opposite results. Charity is a voluntary act made by those who have a surplus to assist those who do not. “Welfare” is a system guaranteed to end up in hardship for everyone but particularly for those who are forced to be “charitable”.

The insoluble dilemma of a “welfare state” is twofold. First, it results in a situation in which the majority of people who vote are partially or wholly dependent on the state for their sustenance. In every “advanced” nation today, those who vote for a living outnumber those who work for one. It is true that not everybody, or even a majority of those eligible in many cases, bothers to vote at all. It is equally true that the “wards of the state” have much more incentive to vote than do those who are to provide for them.

The second dilemma is the issue of the unfunded liabilities. The US government divides its budget into discretionary and NON discretionary items. The bulwarks of the welfare state, social security and medicare, fall into the second category. They are considered untouchable. There are only two problems here. First, the unfunded liabilities of these two programs are somewhere in the order of $US 80 - 120 TRILLION. Second, any talk of sharply lower annual deficits (let alone talk of a return to a budget balance) are puerile without MAJOR surgery being performed on medicare and social security. They are gigantic millstones around the neck of the US economy as they are on the economies of all other nations.

In the hands of government - “welfare” becomes its antithesis - “hardship”. Today, this is being illustrated in real time in Greece. But no nation can afford a welfare state in the long run.

It appears that the "Captain" is on to something here. A few short hours ago none other than Goldman Sachs was forced to come out with a report attempting to justify this most fundamental social illusion, in "Is Health Spending Unsustainable" - that only Goldman, and potentially the San Fran Fed, could put this question for serious debate when it is well known that the unfunded liabilities associated with such luxuries is in the triple trillion digit ballpark, speaks volumes. Yet, since even Goldman is now floating various "trial balloons", we can only assume that this is about to become a big issue for policy, especially ahead of the Supreme Court's hearings later this month on the constitutionality of the national health care law.
From Goldman Sachs
I. Is Health Spending Unsustainable?
Health spending in the US exceeds that of any other developed nation, topping the next largest spender by nearly half again as much (as a share of GDP). Spending has also tended to grow faster in the United States than elsewhere (Exhibit 1). Unchecked spending runs the risk of destabilizing public finances, reducing competitiveness with trading partners, and ultimately crowding out other productive uses of resources. This is particularly the case if health spending is inefficient (Exhibit 2).

However, the case that health spending is “unsustainable” isn’t as clear cut as the debate has sometimes made it out to be. After all, dedicating a larger share of future income gains to improving health could be a more productive investment than increasing other forms of personal consumption. Moreover, while health spending within federal programs is clearly unsustainable under current policies and growth trends, whether broader health spending should also be deemed to be growing too quickly depends on whether increased spending improves outcomes and whether it affects the ability of the rest of the economy to grow.
What Drives Health Spending?
From 1970 through 2010, nominal health spending grew at an average annual rate of 9.7%, well in excess of nominal GDP growth of 6.8%. Excess growth was greatest in the 1970s and 1980s, declined in the 1990s, and reaccelerated somewhat in the last decade (Exhibit 3). Continual growth in excess of GDP growth has led health spending to reach 15% of GDP (Exhibit 4). Notably, this has occurred while the out of pocket costs to patients and consumers have declined, replaced by indirect costs such as insurance premiums and taxes that fund public programs, as well as federal borrowing.

There is no single cause for excess growth in health spending, but a large body of research has focused on the drivers of growth and has reached qualitatively similar conclusions, as shown in Exhibit 5:

Technology. Advancement in the state of technology typically increases cost over existing products or procedures, though it may produce savings in other areas. Academic work has typically attributed residual spending growth to technology, after accounting for other measurable factors. More recent work has tended to find a slightly smaller though still large contribution from technology to total health spending.The exact magnitude is necessarily imprecise in any case, given substantial interaction between the availability of new technology and willingness to pay for it due to rising incomes and greater insurance.
Income. Differences in income explain a good deal of international variation in the health spending to GDP ratio (Exhibit 6). This implies that as societies become richer, they devote a greater share of additional income gains to health rather than other forms of consumption. We find that regressing excess cost growth through 2010 against real GDP growth with a one year lag produces a statistically significant coefficient similar to the estimates shown in Exhibit 5.

[Tylerdurden]

Insurance. The RAND Health Insurance Experiment conducted in the late 1970s found an insurance elasticity of 0.2, which implies that around 10% of the increase in real per capita spending growth since 1960 is attributable to increased insurance coverage. A more recent study examining the effect of coverage in Medicare found a much greater effect, suggesting increased insurance coverage could be responsible for as much as half of the increase in per capita spending. (See Amy Finkelstein, “The Aggregate Effects of Health Insurance: Evidence from the Introduction of Medicare,” 2006.)
Demographics. The contribution of aging of the population to spending growth is more certain but even here there are differences in estimated magnitude. Clearly, aging will become a more important source of health spending growth over the next two decades, but as spending on the “baby boomer” generation peaks, income growth and technology are likely to be more important factors over the long run.
What do official projections assume?
Despite chronic health spending growth in excess of GDP growth (an average of 2.1 percentage points on a real per capita basis since 1975) official estimates of Medicare solvency had until about ten years ago assumed a long-range growth rate essentially equivalent to GDP. This was eventually increased to GDP plus one percentage point, where it remained until passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Following enactment of that law, the official Medicare projections reported annually by program trustees are now based on growth of GDP minus 0.1 percent.
The ACA permanently reduced annual payment increases for Medicare providers and sets in motion a number of payment policy reforms that could lower utilization, so a reduction in future Medicare cost growth of this magnitude seems reasonable. However, these new lower projections have upside risk given that some of the reduction in growth stems from sizeable payment reductions that might eventually be reversed. Moreover, while the ACA improved Medicare finances, these savings as well as new taxes go to finance insurance expansion, which will raise total health spending in the medium term (Exhibit 7).
When Does Health Spending Become Unsustainable?
One of the difficulties in determining how long health spending is likely to grow as a share of the economy is that the US health care system has not existed for all that long in its current form. Commercial insurance companies only began to offer health insurance on a large scale around World War II (partly due to the employer response to wage controls), and federal health insurance programs (Medicare and Medicaid)were not established until the 1960’s. That said, some trends would likely prompt a reduction in health spending growth:
Public finances become strained. Since health spending totals about 15% of GDP but 23% of federal outlays, when health spending grows in excess of GDP, government spending as a share of GDP will necessarily expand. The demographic mix of publicly vs. privately insured individuals will add to fiscal pressures. Exhibit 8 shows the trajectory of spending assuming that historical excess cost growth gradually slows to zero and that certain cost containment policies are not maintained over the long term.
Whereas the private sector can gradually respond to increased health spending, the public sector—and particularly the federal—reaction is apt to be much slower, leading to deficit spending until changes are adopted. As shown in Exhibit 8, health spending if left unchecked would not only crowd out other spending but would also eventually exhaust all federal revenues.

Of course, we would expect the situation to be addressed long before this happens.
Health spending begins to crowd out real non-health consumption. This is not such a hard test to meet over the medium term, mainly because of the “low” base from which health spending as a share of GDP starts. Real per capita spending growth of around GDP+1.5% would slow but probably not reverse nonhealth consumption growth over the next 75 years, though this depends greatly on real growth and demographic assumptions (Exhibit 9).

Increased health spending begins to weigh on growth, creating a vicious circle. This appears quite distant, if it ever occurs. The main concern here would be that rising health spending crowds out other productive activities (for instance, fixed investment or education), reducing potential output and further increasing relative health spending. Alternatively, higher taxes (to pay for public programs) or insurance premiums (to pay for private insurance) would reduce workers’ take-home pay, with potentially adverse incentive effects at a certain level.
Finally, there is some evidence from businesses that excess health costs reduce employment and output. (Sood et al, find that a 10% increase in excess cost growth (i.e., about 20bps) leads to 121,000 fewer more jobs and $14bn in lost value added. See Neeraj Sood, Arkadipta Ghosh and Jose Escarce (2009) “Health Care Cost Growth, Employer Provided Insurance and the Economic Performance of U.S. Industries,” Health Services Research, Vol 44.)
When the Time Finally Comes…
If costs are ultimately deemed too great (or projected growth too fast) what can be done? The decision before policymakers, employers, and individuals falls along two lines: first, what share of total output should be devoted to health care instead of other goods and services, and second, what is the optimal mix of public vs. private payment for whatever share is decided. This leaves three options:
1. Limit growth in health care costs regardless of payor, because activities that would otherwise be crowded out by health spending are deemed more important. Reaction to rapid growth in the 1980s— health spending consumed around 25% of overall per capita real income growth—led to Medicare payment reductions and broader use of managed care. This, along with strong growth elsewhere in the economy,stabilized the health share of GDP temporarily. Future restraint in health spending is likely to come from elsewhere, particularly given that Medicare cuts were already used to finance new spending under the ACA, so those savings have already been captured. A reduction in the geographic disparity of health spending is one option for future savings—patients in some areas of the country receive much greater intensity of treatment at greater cost than patients in other parts of the country, but show little medical benefit. (See for instance “Health Care Spending, Quality, and Outcomes; More Isn’t Always Better,” Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, 2009) Use of information technology to increase medical and administrative efficiency is another.
2. Allow health spending to rise, but reallocate payment responsibility from the public sector to the private sector, in order to avoid the fiscal consequences that would follow, i.e., tax increases or spending cuts elsewhere in the budget. Since most of the public policy discussion regarding the rise in health spending relates to Medicare, and to a lesser extent Medicaid, it is quite possible that policymakers will find it sufficient to shift the financing burden for health costs away from the federal budget. This could mean an increase in the burden on state governments (they already face growth in Medicaid spending under the ACA), and would almost certainly imply increased cost-sharing for Medicare enrollees, thus shifting some of financing burden back to the private sector in the form of higher out of pocket spending. Under some proposals, such as that offered by House Budget Committee Paul Ryan, Medicare spending would be capped at GDP+1. The Bowles-Simpson proposal would apply the limitation more broadly, limiting federal health spending and the tax exclusion for employer sponsored benefits to GDP+1, though it is not specific on how this would be accomplished.

[Tylerdurden]

3. Allow public health spending to rise and reallocate resources to pay for it. While it is unlikely that public-sector health spending growth would go completely unchecked, it is possible that additional health spending restraint could be modest, with a greater focus on reallocating resources to cover increasing state and federal health costs. The result would likely be higher taxes in this scenario, since in 2011 Congress already capped discretionary spending (annual appropriations by Congress) and automatic cuts set to take effect next year would reduce this segment further (we assume these will be pushed back past 2013). We estimate that the primary budget deficit (i.e., excluding interest) will average around 2% of GDP over the next ten years and it is politically unrealistic to imagine that such a large amount of savings can be found in the 13% of the budget that excludes appropriations, health, and Social Security. The upshot under this scenario would most likely be a tax increase of a magnitude similar to our estimated primary deficit of around 2% of GDP (roughly the size of the 2001/2003 tax cuts set to expire at year end). However, this would be the minimum under such a scenario, for two reasons: first, health spending would continue to rise, requiring additional tax hikes later on. Second, eliminating the primary deficit over the medium term is the minimum—a primary surplus is needed to bring down the ratio of debt to GDP.
The ultimate outcome is likely to be a combination of all three scenarios, though we suspect public policy will focus on the second and third options since they have less ability to influence the growth of privately financed health spending. It is also worth noting that health spending may naturally slow as its ratio to GDP rises; a simple regression of excess cost growth against the lagged ratio of health spending to GDP shows a coefficient of around -0.25, implying a gradual slowing in the growth rate even as the level of health spending continues to increase.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/welfare-great-delusion

[Old Dryfoot]

Let them eat cake...

[Tom Montgomery]

Nostalgic for the 19th Century, eh? Some folks love the idea of social Darwinism. Go figure....

[S.V. Airlie]

Why do you figure welfare recipients are mostly democrat? In many ways they are paid to be. Welfare was always meant to be short term..To help people over a rough patch and that is right and as it should be. How long should a rough patch last, 60 years?Buy a fish and one can eat for a day. teach one to fish, you can eat every day.

[Paul Girouard]

[QUOTE=S.V. Airlie;3347439

Buy a fish and one can eat for a day. teach one to fish, you can eat every day.

[/QUOTE]

" Fishing " sucks in some locations, what do you do then, move when you're broke? Guess that's one 'easy' answer, what happens when you move and "fishing" dries up? Move again, when you're broke?

[S.V. Airlie]

It's the concept Paul, not necessarily literal.

[Paul Girouard]

It's the concept Paul, not necessarily literal.

As was my reply, hence the ' ' around fishing, fishing could be any thing , building , making cars , steel mills, what ever one makes a living at.
As I typed it I figured someone would go the direction of people in covered wagons moving from the dust bowl areas in the 20's / 30's , saying "moving been done before , if there's no work , MOVE! " That's the way I thought it would be deflected. Didn't think of you / or anyone taking the fishing as literal fishing. But what ever.

[Tom Montgomery]

Why do you figure welfare recipients are mostly democrat? In many ways they are paid to be. Welfare was always meant to be short term..To help people over a rough patch and that is right and as it should be. How long should a rough patch last, 60 years?Buy a fish and one can eat for a day. teach one to fish, you can eat every day.

You see? The discussion already becomes muddled.

Did you read what Mark posted, Jamie, or just the thread title?

Mark included Social Security and Medicare under the umbrella of "Welfare."

These two programs were NOT intended to be "short term," they were intended to protect working Americans from poverty once they became elderly.

I am quite willing to discuss reformation and improvement of these programs, I am not willing to countenance their abolishment.

I don't want to live in a society that is unwilling to provide for the sick, elderly, and disadvantaged.

[S.V. Airlie]

Well, those two programs, you pay into working. Different fish

[Tom Montgomery]

Well, those two programs, you pay into working. Different fish

NOT IN THIS THREAD.

This indicates to me that you are lazy and did not bother to read Mark's three original posts.

No surprise, unfortunately.

[S.V. Airlie]

I'm surprised you did.ark's post..please note 3 scenarios.
The ultimate outcome is likely to be a combination of all three scenarios,

[Tom Montgomery]

You are lazy. Shame on you.

[S.V. Airlie]

I guess I am as lazy as you are Tom.So be it.

[Tom Montgomery]

Very disappointing.

[Gerarddm]

"It takes a village".

Thus endeth the lesson.

[Keith Wilson]

God help us, Mark posts something that's halfway coherent! The second part of the post, the bit on health care spending from Goldman Sachs, is actually well-researched and accurate. The rate of increase in care spending in the US is unsustainable, it is indeed the major problem with the budget, and the US is indeed an outlier. The first part of the post is the same Social Darwinist rant as always, and completely misunderstands the problem. The claim that the welfare state is impossible is over the long term is obviously wrong; just look at all of northern Europe. The current rate of increase in heath care spending is unsustainable whoever pays for it. The problem is obviously not "welfare, since that problems is specific to the US. The European countries, which have far greater government involvement in paying for medical care, do not have that problem.




Social Security, OTOH is not unsustainable at all; relatively small increases in either the tax rate or the amount of income subect to taxation woudl make it solvent as far out as we can predict.
.
Form Mark's second post, showing that Social Security is not the problem (second graph). Note that heath care is the only thing increasing.

[Tom Montgomery]

Thank you, Keith.

I tire of the ranting and of ignorant ideologues.

[Ian McColgin]

In looking at a screed, it helps to test the balder assertions to see if they are true. The author C&P’d in the OP claims:

“In every “advanced” nation today, those who vote for a living outnumber those who work for one.”

Even if we discount the simple fact that most voters work for a living, there are about 146,743,000 employed in the US and in the heavy 2008 turn-out about 131,300,000 people voted. There is no way that the OP’s cited claim can be true.

Most of the other “factual” claims in this piece of trash suffer similarly bad encounters with reality. The graphs make it look real but it’s just about as good as the Laughable Curve of Republican economics. Made up “facts” remain just that, made up. An article that can’t bother with truth in one of its fundamental political assumptions is really not worth wasting time with.

[Tom Montgomery]

What gets me is that the ideologues are not interested in reforming/fixing programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They are determine to dismantle these programs.

That is not the USA that I want to live in. The unhappy fringe is welcome to immigrate.

[Keith Wilson]

Ian, Mark's C&P has two quite distinct parts, from very different sources. The second part, the one written by the folks at Goldman Sachs, is rational, coherent, and fairly well done; although the lack of comparisons with other countries is a glaring omission. The first part is the usual wild-eyed Randian rant, and isn't at all supported by the data in the second part.

[Paul Girouard]

[QUOTE=Keith Wilson;3347571]God help us, Mark posts something that's halfway coherent!e spending is unsustainable whoever pays for it.





Like this very clear graph, talk about spaghetti gone bad!! LOL

[Keith Wilson]

Actually it's a very clear graph. It shows that the US is spending WAY more on health care than every other civilized country. They're almost all between 7% and 11% of GDP, while we're at 16+%, of GDP for no better results. And we have 50 million people without health insurance.

A slightly cleaner version, but constant dollars, not % of GDP. Same conclusion.

[Tom Montgomery]

They HATE your charts, Keith.

Facts are the reality that tosses the monkey wrench into ideology.

Kudos. Keep on keeping on.

[Keith Wilson]

Charts are only a way of putting a lot of information into a small space. If folks hate charts, they hate information about reality. I admit, reality is sometimes very inconvenient.

I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Edward Tufte. I heartily recommend The Visual Display of Quantitative information. You'd think a book about graphs would be a sure cure for insomnia, but not at all. Seriously, it's one of the best books I've ever read. Fookin' brilliant, he is.

[hokiefan]

Charts are only a way of putting a lot of information into a small space. If folks hate charts, they hate information about reality. I admit, reality is sometimes very inconvenient.

I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Edward Tufte. I heartily recommend The Visual Display of Quantitative information. You'd think a book about graphs would be a sure cure for insomnia, but not at all. Seriously, it's one of the best books I've ever read. Fookin' brilliant, he is.

You must be an engineer Keith!!! Yeah, I knew that already. I've been accused of not being able to talk without the ability to draw a diagram.

Cheers,

Bobby

[PeterSibley]

[QUOTE=Paul Girouard;3347701]

God help us, Mark posts something that's halfway coherent!e spending is unsustainable whoever pays for it.





Like this very clear graph, talk about spaghetti gone bad!! LOL

Are you seriously having difficulty with that graph Paul ? I really doubt it .

[skipper68]

You see? The discussion already becomes muddled.

Did you read what Mark posted, Jamie, or just the thread title?

Mark included Social Security and Medicare under the umbrella of "Welfare."

These two programs were NOT intended to be "short term," they were intended to protect working Americans from poverty once they became elderly.

I am quite willing to discuss reformation and improvement of these programs, I am not willing to countenance their abolishment.

I don't want to live in a society that is unwilling to provide for the sick, elderly, and disadvantaged.

I don't want to live in a society that is unwilling to provide for the sick, elderly, and disadvantaged.

A society that can't take care of it's least, will never see it's best. Good post. Thank you.

[Dutch]

Shame on you tyler durden for bursting their collectivist balloons and bubbles of faith in big brother based gobbledygook!

[Horace]

God help us, Mark posts something that's halfway coherent! The second part of the post, the bit on health care spending from Goldman Sachs, is actually well-researched and accurate. The rate of increase in care spending in the US is unsustainable, it is indeed the major problem with the budget, and the US is indeed an outlier.............The European countries, which have far greater government involvement in paying for medical care, do not have that problem.

We've been re-viewing this chart for quite a while. Three questions:

1) Has anyone ever checked to see if the flatter part of the curve from 1960 to 1966 is part of the rising percentages from '66 on, or if it is part of a much slower (more level) rate of increase prior to 1960?

2) Anyone remember what happened in 1964?

3) Should Medicare/Medicaid costs (plus population aging) really correlate with the increase of heath care as a percentage of GDP (another chart, relating the government spending programs to total health care expenditure, would be helpful), is Medicare really the model to emulate to reduce costs? Not immediately pertinent to this thread, but maybe Keith can exercise his chart-gathering skills for the next go-round on health care.

[Keith Wilson]

Since much of the heath care cost increase is driven by technology, going back 50 years isn't very helpful. We could do less, and it cost less.

Public and private expenditures for health care in the US track together almost exactly. I think this chart measures the change since 1960, since I'm certain we paid more than nothing for health care even back then.




No, I'm not sure Medicare is the best model, although it seems far more efficient than private insurance. Everything designed by human beings can be improved. The interesting question is why heath care is so dramatically cheaper almost everywhere else.

[Horace]

Thanks. Your chart immediately suggests another needed comparison: the ratio of geriatric v. pre-geriatric costs in single-payer systems, vs. the US system.

As far as costs go, I have my opinion--but it's rather cynical.

[Tylerdurden]

I haven't seen anyone suggest leaving the poor and defenseless on their own past rabid libertarians. Contrary to WBF propaganda I am not one of them. I do believe the system is unsustainable and we will have to rethink what we are doing from scratch. I would rather fix it and keep people from suffering through a collapse of the system down the road. Constant meddling and minor adjustment will not do the job. I think many of the protests above are political in nature and not based on rational unbiased thought. At least that's the impression left. Right now the system traps people in for a lifetime of suffering that is now past one to generations in the same family. Minority's actually suffer most from this. Where is the compassion for them?

[Keith Wilson]

Constant meddling and minor adjustment will not do the job.

It most certainly will do the job with social security, as the data you posted show. That works pretty well. Health care costs are another matter entirely; thay ar twice as high in the US as the other wealthy countries,and rising faster. This is a real problem. It would be a good idea to look at what other countries are doing, since they've managed to keep costs more or less under control, yet ensure everybody

Right now the system traps people in for a lifetime of suffering . . .

What in the world are you talking about? How exactly does "the system" do this? "The system" being presumably Social Security and Medicare, since that was what your original post was about.

[Tylerdurden]

It most certainly will do the job with social security, ans the data you posted show. That works pretty well. Health care costs are another matter entirely; thay ar twice as high in the US as the other wealthy countries,and rising faster, This is a real problem. It would be a good idea to look at what other countries are doing, since they've managed to keep costs more or less under control, yet ensure everybody

What in the world are you talking about? How exactly does "the system" do this? "The system" being presumably Social Security onf Medicare, since that was what your original post was about.

Whats the title of this thread?

[Keith Wilson]

Whats the title of this thread?

What was 90% of your first post about? The author of the first part of your C&P obviously includes Social Security and Medicare in "welfare", since that's what he's writing about - and in fact, those two programs comprise the vast majority of money paid by the government to private citizens.

[Tylerdurden]

What was 90% of your first post about? The author of the first part of your C&P obviously includes Social Security and Medicare in "welfare", since that's what he's writing about - and in fact, those two programs comprise the vast majority of money paid by the government to private citizens.

Keith, there is not an entitlement program you don't like. We know. Have fun with it. While it lasts.

[Dan McCosh]

Why do you figure welfare recipients are mostly democrat? In many ways they are paid to be. Welfare was always meant to be short term..To help people over a rough patch and that is right and as it should be. How long should a rough patch last, 60 years?Buy a fish and one can eat for a day. teach one to fish, you can eat every day.

Most retirees are Democrats? Never heard this one before.

[Wavewacker]

Tylerd, again buddy, I don't know where you dig this crap up, but your every thread begins with incorrect information. If you want to learn about the concept of welfare you'll need to go back to the Romans, not Bismark. The elderly who were Roman citizens I believe were the first reciepents of a government social payment system. Now, who was it that said that a society will be know for how it took care of the least of them?

[Tylerdurden]

Tylerd, again buddy, I don't know where you dig this crap up, but your every thread begins with incorrect information. If you want to learn about the concept of welfare you'll need to go back to the Romans, not Bismark. The elderly who were Roman citizens I believe were the first reciepents of a government social payment system. Now, who was it that said that a society will be know for how it took care of the least of them?

I think you need some learning. What happened to the Roman Empire when entitlements reached critical mass? The went down the path of devaluing their currency while increasing benefits. I can just imagine how many Keiths were spouting off in those days. Now we have traveled down the exact same path. A path that no country has ever survived without a currency collapse.

This alternate reality you guys like to create just doesn't cut it for those who are informed and awake.

[Keith Wilson]

Keith, there is not an entitlement program you don't like.

BS. This is an example of a consistent pattern: you argue with somebody inside your own head, what you imagine somebody like me must think, rather than what I actually write. I don't much mind "entitlement programs" that give tax money to those who actually need it, even if they're inefficient and sometimes badly designed. I very much mind programs that give tax money to those who already have great whopping piles of it. A particularly bad example is the carried interest loophole, the reason why Romney pays a lower tax rate than I do on over 200X the income.

[Horace]

There must be a plenty of Democrats using the same "loophole" as well, since they controlled the Congress and White House in the first part of 0bama's term--and it's still there.

[Keith Wilson]

Sure is. Folks with lots of money have a lot of influence whoever's in power, and it's usually much easier to prevent action than change something.