2016

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Social Programs

The road we’re on:

A social program is government taking money from one person and giving it to or spending it on behalf of another person. Also labeled as “Transfer Payments”, it currently forms a major portion of what monies our government collects in taxes and hands out to others by one means or another.

If you read the segment on Taxes and Spending, you know that our government spends much more than it takes in. This can be reported in what is spent per year by our government, measured against what it brings in annually in taxes. That number seesaws up and down based on spending versus revenues. 

Another number is what our government has overspent and still owes for monies borrowed to sustain various government spending. That is our nation’s debt. And, whenever you have debt, you have interest, or the cost to borrow that money.

So, annually, a deficit is created, or more unlikely, a surplus. And as the years go by what is borrowed and remains unpaid becomes our national debt. 

Look at it as a household budget. The family takes in X amount of dollars a year and spends Y amount of dollars a year. If the family income or other resources are not enough to make all family goals, money can be borrowed. So the typical family lives off of it’s income and buys things they do not have enough money to buy on credit. 

The credit may be for a house, a car, a boat, a motorcycle, etc. As long as the family can survive and manage their debt, all is well.

While the American family can only accumulate so much debt before credit sources cut off their borrowing, the U.S. government currently spends more than it earns but can continue to keep borrowing more.
 

Our elected officials in Washington create social programs. A law is enacted and additional revenue to pay for the new spending must come from increased taxes, decreasing spending in another area and reallocating money for the new program, or borrowed and put on the government credit card.
 

There are only a few areas of government spending that do not represent specifically spending to benefit a citizen’s well being. Defense protects the people of our country but does not redirect funds to a citizen. Other monies for national security, funds to operate our government and interest on the debt do not have a U.S. citizen as a beneficiary. These are expenses to run and operate a free nation. 

Spending on all other programs meant to move money from one citizen to another fall under; Pensions (Social Security), Welfare, Education and Healthcare, and consume roughly 68% of our Federal budget looking at 2015 projections at USGovernmentSpending.com.

(http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/united_states_total_spending_pie_chart)

While we might make some advances on an annual budget, the overall debt projected by the Congressional Budget Office puts interest on our debt at 100% of our Gross Domestic Product by 2039. The GDP adds up the cost amount earned by all goods and service work by America’s industry and workers.

(http://www.cbo.gov/publication/45471)

At the time of this writing, our national debt rings in at close to $18,000,000,000,000, or $18 Trillion dollars. 

Reports and warnings abound how our nation is spending itself into a hole from which it can’t climb out. Also at the time of this writing, our leadership in Washington, our ELECTED officials, have no plan to confront this. 

How did we get here?

 
The road we’ve traveled

Social Programs always sound wonderful and compassionate. But sometimes the results intended are not the results achieved. 

A sampling of taking money from one citizen and spending for another come in so many ways it can make your head spin. Like tens of thousands spent to study shrimp on a treadmill or why Asian prostitutes drink. But these are the nickel and dime items, usually added by the infamous method of ‘pork barrel spending’, or an amendment that a politician adds to a bill for a pet project in the district he or she serves.

But again, these add up to seemingly intolerable numbers but it’s the big Social Programs that are the pillars sustaining our tremendous national debt.

Examples of this transfer spending include:
Social Security 

Minimum Wage
Medicare and Medicaid
Food Stamps
Unemployment

The Community Reinvestment Act
The Affordable Care Act

All of these programs take money from one person and gives it to another. If you might believe that such compassion for our fellow humans is justified and moral, the question remains: Who will pay for it all? What happens when our national credit card is cut up by our creditors? What will happen when the doodoo hits the fan?

One idea about this comes from a renowned quote attributed to a guy named Alexander Fraser Tytler:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy--to be followed by a dictatorship.”

What he is saying is that when folks vote for politicians who promise them something—the bank will eventually be broken.

Other nations that have followed such behavior can be examples to us as to how the outcome of giant social programs will turn out. Some of them are

Britain, France, Venezuela, Argentina, Greece, Spain and Germany.

Check your international news sources if you want more information on this. 

What was it like for Americans before these Social Programs existed?

What did Americans do, before social security, before minimum wage, 

before the Community Reinvestment Act (guaranteeing mortgages to high risk borrowers), before Medicare or Medicaid, before food stamps, before unemployment, before the Affordable Care Act?

Before well meaning politicians stepped up what can certainly be viewed as vote-getting laws, folks were left more or less to their own devices or the one, quickly disappearing resource that was available; it was called Family. Whenever government spends more money, taken from one person and given to benefit another, government becomes the quasi-head of the family.
 

When the War on Poverty was enacted, single parents were subsidized by government to help them raise their children. The rate of out-of-wedlock births has skyrocketed as a result. An NPR report (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4865449), 

states that forty years ago, one out of four black children were born to a single mother. That rate now stands at 70%. Give people money for making poor decisions and you’re sure to get more poor decisions. 

But, its your money they are spending, not theirs.

In just looking at some of the main legs on the stool that drives national spending and debt, ‘compassionate’ lawmakers sought to take it upon government not to guarantee ‘the pursuit of happiness’ but to guarantee that happiness.

Social Security was passed into law in 1935. It contained a small host of benefits government would guarantee to America’s citizens to ease the uncertainty of life. It included a death benefit, unemployment benefits and retirement benefits.
(http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1609.html)

What was once the responsibility of the individual now became the responsibility of government.

Under Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society program instituted Medicare for the elderly, Medicaid for the poor and in general a ‘War on Poverty’. Key in this legislation is that government taxed its citizens to pay for the well being of Americans by placing government on the hook for guaranteeing what was originally the responsibility of the individual.
 

Looking at these behemoth-spending initiatives, there is one political party that is invariably in power at the time these laws are passed. Can you guess which political party has been so reckless with your money? 

Look at the link for party levels in government when these big bills where passed. At infoplease.com a chart identifies party strengths at the passing of each of these gigantic spending measures. 

(http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774721.html)

Look at the years for:

1935 The Social Security Act - Democrats
1964 Food Stamp Act - Democrats
1965 Medicare/Medicaid/Welfare - Democrats

2010 The Affordable Care Act - Democrats

2014 Immigration Amnesty? – Democrat President

One can easily understand why the lower classes and government-dependent masses vote Democrat.
 

Another item of contention is what has been dubbed “Obama Phones”. This is a program for giving free cell phones and airtime to those who can’t afford it. The Obama Phone label is totally ingenuous. This came about by an FCC program in 1986 that guaranteed phone service to homes of the poor.

The FCC ruling allowed phone service providers to offer free phone service to those eligible. While this was not done via tax collection, the ruling allowed providers to add fees to those customers who did pay for their own service. If you could afford your own phone service you were going to help pay for phone services to others. 

What happened to open this up to abuse was in 2008 allowing cell phones to replace landline phones, one per household. With a cell phone giveaway the abuse becomes rampant because there can be any number of people in a household who claim the benefit.
 

Food Stamps were another Social Program to provide free food to the underprivileged. My own family used them in the 1960’s as we had a large family and one income provider often left little food to go around. The first program ran from May of 1939 through the Spring of 1943. Another program ran from 1961 through 1964. At the request of President Lyndon Johnson the program was made a permanent fixture by the Food Stamp Act of 1964.
(http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/short-history-snap)

At StatisticBrain.com, food stamp use is documented from 1969 until the present. In 1969 there were less than 3 million recipients. That number rose to over 17 million by 2000. In 2011 the number mushroomed to nearly 45 million.
(http://www.statisticbrain.com/food-stamp-statistics/)

The road ahead:

If Congress or president Barak Obama by Executive Order, legalizes millions who have entered America illegally, they will immediately become wards of the State, and indeed have thus become as the recent influx in 2014 shows. The president has seen fit to house, clothe, feed and educate the illegal immigrants, all being paid for by working Americans.

Under the segment on Immigration it is discussed how those who were once in the shadows can be allowed to come forth and receive life’s necessities provided by Uncle Sam. But government has no money to afford this action. What would your rational guess be about where our national debt will take us?

Immigration Amnesty will be the fourth leg of the stool that supports our nation being driven to financial destruction and ensuing march to become a socialist country. Do a little research and find one success story of a nation that is socialist. Sweden--maybe. But that is a small nation, nowhere near our levels of those living off the government dole.

Numbers show roughly 47% of earning Americans that do not contribute any money to run our country. What happens when it’s more than 50%--60%? The future of this is highlighted at Heritage.org. If you have internet access or a smart phone, you can see all of this for yourself.
(http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/11/the-2013-index-of-dependence-on-government)

If folks running for office promise you something they are promising you more of the same. As it is, our children and grandchildren will bear the suffering of those being so “compassionate.” At one time charitable organizations have contributed greatly to help those in need. But a recent municipality shutting down a charity group for passing out free food is any indication of stifling those willing to help, that ONLY leaves government.

If you are old enough to remember the TV Show, Sea Hunt, you might remember a typical scene underwater; a diver has his foot caught in debris at the bottom of the water. His oxygen is running out. Then appears actor, Lloyd Bridges, swimming to the diver, freeing his foot and sharing his oxygen with the person as they make their way to the surface.

Now imagine five or six divers caught in debris with their oxygen running out. Our intrepid hero might be able to free them all but, with only one oxygen tank (taxpayer), to divide amongst six people ---- pretty much one will die before reaching the surface.

How long will it be before someone dies in America because Government has sucked so much oxygen (money), from American workers, will the country finally hit rock bottom?