Posted on 02/12/2012 8:48:12 PM PST by sinanju
Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.
There is little poverty here in Chisago County, northeast of Minneapolis, where cheap housing for commuters is gradually replacing farmland. But Mr. Gulbranson and many other residents who describe themselves as self-sufficient members of the American middle class and as opponents of government largess are drawing more deeply on that government with each passing year.
Dozens of benefits programs provided an average of $6,583 for each man, woman and child in the county in 2009, a 69 percent increase from 2000 after adjusting for inflation. In Chisago, and across the nation, the government now provides almost $1 in benefits for every $4 in other income.
Older people get most of the benefits, primarily through Social Security and Medicare, but aid for the rest of the population has increased about as quickly through programs for the disabled, the unemployed, veterans and children....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It was clearly tilted to make it look like we're all becoming impoverished, the middle class is history and permanent decline is now a given so we all might as well smile, hand over all our income and gratefully eat whatever crumbs the state deigns to toss our way.
Make no mistake, this is the end result of the process that began with FDR--to make as many Americans dependent on government as possible so as to make us all pliant slaves.
From the comments:
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Charles Lore
NYC
“So... The point of this article is apparently that if you throw money at people, it might make them compromise their principles. That’s really not that surprising. What is surprising is that so many Times readers accept that as proof that the principles were wrong to begin with.”
“all are required to contribute to them, there is no opt-out, and the massive scale of these programs kills private competition . . . - Never mind that the benefits you get are piddling in comparison to what you could have gotten if you’d been allowed to keep the taxes in the first place . . . . the NY Times gloat about it.”
great post.
Well, sure. It goes something like this.
Government backstops and provides loans for houses - since the 1930s. Why? Because the bubble they created in the 1920s wiped out all the banks! Duh. So, they started FNMA in 1938. By 1968, it was spun off as a GSA, with stockholders, board of directors, the whole nine yards. By 2008, the steaming pile/rotting carcass was offloaded on the hapless taxpayer, with a ginormous real estate bubble in the interim.
The truth is, housing would be AFFORDABLE, had the government not got involved - price fixing never works, it leads to shortages.
College Tuition. Guess what happened there? Why has tuition gone up 9% every year since golly knows when?
Medical Care.... Medicaire... Medicaide.. See a pattern here? Yeah, if I need a lifesaving operation, I won’t be able to afford it out of pocket, why do you suppose that is? You get one guess.
Government comes along, breaks your leg, and then hands you a pair of crutches. “Lucky for you!”
Not only that, but when the market for low-cost items and services is subsidized, a whole lot of downward price pressure is removed, and prices for goods and services bought by the non-subsidized market stay artificially high.
Our government is running trillion and a half yearly deficits while squashing private enterprise under regulations and diktats. Unsustainable and it seems no one is offering a solution or even acknowledging that this is the number one problem facing our nation.
All these expansive government entitlements will come to an end. A very painful, horrifying end. When the trough is no longer filled it will get very ugly. Our cities will burn and theft, rape, and murder will be right in the open.
This is the whole point.
The left is trying to ensnare, enslave the middle class to government benefits because they know that is where the votes are. Once people depend on it, they are slaves to the Democrat Party.
When driving toward a brick wall, the left thinks the answer is to step on the accellerator.
Excellent post, AUG!
Karl Marx hated the middle class. He came up with ways to get rid of it.
Using Marx’s ideas to help the middle class is like using Hitler’s ideas to help the Jews.
The middle class in America is disappearing. It’s because we’re becoming a Marxist state.
Of course, it’s middle class people pushing for this Utopia - so what do you want me to say?
Precisely. Chisago County is in the northeast exurbs of the Twin Cities metro area. Exactly the kind of place a FReeper might move to if he wanted to get as far away from Mpls./St. Paul as he could while still having to commute to a job there every day. (Not that I have anyone in mind...)
Good people there, I'd call it very middle class, and it seems generally conservative; for this story, probably not coincidental that it's the home of freshman R Congressman Chip Cravaack (who defeated longtime career porkman Jim Oberstar.)
In other words, a great place for some leftist entity like the Slimes to find one person on the dole to make a whole movement sound hypocritical.
You are so right, but it is a segment of the middle class. That segment has been brain-washed by government schools and the media.
If uncle Sam flew over your town in a helicopter and dropped $100 bills out - is anyone surprised that people step outside to grab whatever floats their way?
Bingo!
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