Posted on 07/11/2012 1:20:10 PM PDT by DannyTN
...The chart below compares average social spending with adjusted per capita GDP growth since 2000. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
And let's anyone be confused on my stance, I:
If you form a spectrum of countries with entitlements, with say communist countries at the far end, those communist countries were/are miserable failures.
Clearly there is a point of excess where the claim that entitlements don't matter becomes bunk.
Also what the chart doesn't show is that if growth is the same, then the more entitlements, the less people who work get paid.
But the chart claims that entitlements themselves do not hinder economic growth. I'm wondering if anyone can poke holes in this chart.
I believe the chart embodies the misconception that “correlation is causation”. For just one briefly-thought-of example, Norway found a boatload of oil off its coast and exploited it. I think they expanded social spending greatly as a result, in addition to already having that type of tradition. Good for them. It worked. I believe the US has had precisely the opposite experience, validated over a longer period of time, as well as having a far more diverse (apologies, I hate that word) population.
There are:
1) Lies
2) Damnable Lies
3) Statistics
This is clearly an example of #3
Well said.
Get down off the theory cloud. Look at reality. The social spending in this country is out of control. No serious Christian can condone it as an example of good stewardship. It is proflegate in every sense of the word.
Wow! A chart with boobs.
Bet they are bursting to get out.
The writer always wanted to be a journalist, and now he are one.
Sorry, but your chart and the premise behind it are both a load of crap.
The countries with the highest amount of “social spending” (think Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba, Russia, Greece, Spain, Portugal et al) have collapsed or are collapsing. All these countries have more spending per capita than we do in the US, and all have economies that are garbage. Moreover, we have the highest level of entitlement payments in our history, and our growth is stagnant.
That article is complete Apples-to-Oranges nonsense. The author is an idiot.
Please provide Scriptural support for Governments taking care of the poor. Government as it's core is compulsion. All that government does is ultimately backed up by the threat of force.
Do you realize that most "programs for the poor" have 80% or more of the dollars absorbed by the bureaucracy (direct and indirect costs)?
I support bankruptcy protections as our Founding Father's found those to be wise. I support safety nets. I think they encourage risk taking and therefore help the economy.
Safety nets are fine, as long as they are strictly private safety nets.
Every single thing government touches, it corrupts or destroys.
Those who view government as an inherent good are true enemies of our Founders and their beliefs. Our Founders did all they could to minimize the impact of government in our lives.
Whatever you think about government care for the poor, there are certain things that are true:
1) The federal government should not be involved
2) People will become dependent
3) And, the taxpayer money will be stolen by politicians
Best to leave it to the churches.
The term “Social Spending” is pretty ambiguous. I followed the link to the source, and to their sources and got some insights.
(See: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/220615515052)
The “social spending” in the chart apparently includes both public and private “social spending”. That means that if I spend my money at my physician’s private practice, it is included as “social spending” even though it is entirely in the private sector.
I think that point alone makes the analysis meaningless.
Apparently any spending on health care is “social spending”, so any free market GDP growth from the health sector would be counted as growth due to “social spending”.
I’m not swallowing this bait.
Prov 29, especially Prov 29:14 The king that faithfully judgeth the poor, his throne shall be established for ever.
Jer 22:15 Shalt thou reign, because thou closest [thyself] in cedar? did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice, [and] then [it was] well with him? 16 He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then [it was] well [with him: was] not this to know me? saith the LORD.
The general authority can be derived from the fact that God gave man dominion over the earth, and made comments directly to Noah after the flood that are considered to establish man's authority for social justice.
But I see specific authority and even a command in the above verses, as well as comments made to Nebuccanezzar.
Dan 4:27 Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity.
"We the people" are the ruler of this country. And if "we the people" want to continue to rule we need to pay attention to the poor. That doesn't mean we have to be stupid about how we do it.
1. The chart’s vertical axis covers just 15 points out of a full range of 100, exaggerating differences in a rather similar range.
2. All countries depicted are similar Westernized economies. Hardcore communist, 3rd world, Asian, and other countries are not included. 22 countries are depicted out of about 200 (depending on how you define “country”).
3. Trajectories are concealed. Greece, Spain, and Italy are imploding. The USA had a long-running 2% norm until welfare spending went, what we would consider, out of control of late. Other ill-defined “normalization of data” is applied.
4. Differing priorities. Americans could put up with a lot more “redistribution of wealth” if they would put up with far smaller homes, compact population demographics, and fewer other options. ...but we won’t, because as a culture we don’t like being subjected to arbitrary limits by strangers. Many of our “poor” are “middle class” by standards of other depicted cultures.
5. Parasitic benefits. Many of the countries can afford another 15 points over our entitlement spending because they’re NOT spending it on military defense. Why? because the USA is taking its own 15 points out of could-be entitlement spending and dumping it into their defense. Cut US military spending to match European levels, and our entitlement spending would rise, GDP growth would boom, and half those countries would cease to exist as they periodically have throughout history.
Upshot: I’m suspicious that the author _wanted_ to obfuscate any entitlement-v-growth correlations.
And what part of scripture tells you that you can reach into your neighbor’s pocket - Government - to satisfy your moral obligations?
All entitlements are not bad - the idea of a social insurance program where workers pay an amount to insure their future is as sound an idea as life insurance or liability insurance. The US screwed up it's program because it is not run as a pure insurance program but is used to redistribute wealth from high-earners to low-earners.
So if entitlement spending is the result of a well-designed insurance program, it is not necessarily detrimental to an economy. What kills an econmony is when there are entitlements that transfer capital from the productive to the non-productive and, in the process, induce a greater number of non-productive people.
Children, veterans, truly disabled people earn my sympathy and deserve some support from society. It is a moral thing to do.
But there is no good moral or economic basis to continue programs that enable able-bodied people to be unproductive, to have children out-of-wedlock, to indulde drug and alcohol habits, to feel entitled to cell phones that they can yack on for hours and cable tv with 999 channels by taking money out of the pockets of hard-working men and women. Why should a worker have to tell his kid he can't have a decent pair of shoes because the government needs to take his money and give it to someone who will be buying illicit drugs with it?
The original example is oversimplified to the point of uselessness, IMHO.
Socialism is the economic system that presumes society will be better off when everyone lives at the expense of everyone else.
People familiar with the Ten Commandments will see that this requires organized coveting and theft. No Christian has the authority to live at the expense of others. The Apostle Paul wrote several times in his epistles that coveting the wealth of others is idolatry. (e.g. Ephesians 5:5) He stated clearly that no such person can attain eternal life.
Jesus dictated the book of Revelation to the Apostle John. In chapter 22 and verse 15, He said that no idolater can inherit eternal life.
Why praise socialism? Because it is a path to a secular Utopia which can only be hell on earth, as the people in Lenin’s Russia, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Little Kim’s North Korea found out.
Put another way, the message of that chart is:
S-T-A-G-N-A-T-I-O-N!!!!
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