Posted on 10/02/2024 8:57:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The number of counties dependent on government aid has surged over time. The lead chart shows political party affiliation.
The Wall Street Journal has a great article on the Growing Reliance of Americans Are Dependence on Government Aid over time. That is a free link.
Americans’ reliance on government support is soaring, driven by programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
That support is especially critical in economically stressed communities throughout the U.S., many of which lean Republican and are concentrated in swing states crucial in deciding the presidential election. Neither party has much incentive to dial back the spending.
The big reasons for this dramatic growth: A much larger share of Americans are seniors, and their healthcare costs have risen. At the same time, many communities have suffered from economic decline because of challenges including the loss of manufacturing, leaving government money as a larger share of people’s income in such places.
This spending accounts for a big and growing share of the national debt. But this year’s presidential candidates, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, have said little about reining it in. In fact, both have offered plans that would add to the costs. Trump would end taxes on Social Security benefits. Harris would expand the Earned Income Tax Credit for lower-income workers and extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that are due to expire, among other proposals.
The data help explain why. Though counties that rely significantly on government spending tend to be small, they are still home to nearly 22% of the U.S. population.
In 2000 there were about 300 countries dependent on Government assistance. Now there are nearly 2,000.
Many of the counties that rely heavily on government safety-net and social-program money have this in common: They are clustered in the battleground states that will decide the presidential election.
About 70% of counties in Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina are significantly reliant on the government income. So are nearly 60% of counties in Pennsylvania. In Arizona, 13 of the 15 counties are heavily reliant on safety-net income.
Measured another way, more than 44% of Michiganders live in counties that are significantly reliant on the government programs. In Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, more than a third of the populations live in such counties.
Spending on these programs has outpaced the income people earn from other sources, the EIG analysis shows. Meanwhile, pressure from a graying population won’t let up: By 2060, nearly a quarter of the U.S. will be at least 65, the Census Bureau projects.
Wow.
And Trump thinks Tariffs will help. All Tariffs will do is raise prices.
For discussion, please see Trump Claims Tariffs Will Reduce the Trade Deficit. Let’s Fact Check.
I will have a second article on tariffs and price impacts later this week.
Also see Ridiculous Answers from Harris and Trump Regarding Food Costs
More confirmation that red regions are being invaded by mercenaries.
Social Security? As in the program we were all required/taxed to contribute to & now it’s considered gov’t aid?
“And Trump thinks Tariffs will help. All Tariffs will do is raise prices.”
Horse dung. The first hundred years of our history we were run on tariffs and liquor excise taxes. We are the market where everyone wants to sell. They either pony up for the privilege of using slave labor and sweatshops...OR they move production here and our economy explodes that way.
And his chart on government assistance is wildly inaccurate. To hear him tell it, republicans are the welfare problem in America.
SS is not government aid you nitwits. It is returning a SMALL amount of the money taken by force from the people.
From the first dollar you earn. 12.6% is taken by the government with the promise (aka outright lie) that if you somehow manage to survive to a certain ever changing age they will return a tiny bit to you. Since that money was already TAXED TWICE there is no need to tax it yet a third time Greedy Guts.
I am sorry that hurts your tiny little fee-fees and strong desire to have to government take all our money through taxes.
Wow.
And Trump thinks Tariffs will help. All Tariffs will do is raise prices.
**********************
With or without tariffs, if doesn’t seem like American capital & labor want anything to do with domestic production.
Always an excuse for this national failure, never any solutions, just stay the course rhetoric.
Being retired on SS is not “dependent on government aid”. Bullcrap. Tariffs anger the Hedge Fund class because it reverses their ability to arbitrage manufacturing out to dirt poor areas around the world. That leaves their only cheap labor force being mass illegal migration. Trump wants to kill that too.
The hedge fund class needs manufacturing to be outside the USA, or in the USA when combined with MASS illegal immigration.
This is a war for America.
So is unemployment insurance. Something that you are required to pay into to.
The government is like an insurance company. You have to pay into it by law, they can jack up the rates any time they wish and will fight like hell to keep from paying out.
Except you can not shop around for better rates.
Exactly. Is free trade better? Sure, but being in a trade war where only the other side is fighting is the worst option of the three.
And Trump thinks Tariffs will help. All Tariffs will do is raise prices.
Trump threatened Tariffs against countries who have tariffs against US products. Those countries responded by dropping their tariffs.
We exist in linear time so we have the ability look back at actions and results.
They specifically say in the title: "Growing Reliance of Americans Are Dependence (sic) on Government Aid"
Then they go on to lump in Medicare into this, which is going to lump any area in which an older population exists that are on Medicare, which are going to be a majority of Republican voters.
While that "majority" of older citizens who are Republican may be small, relatively speaking, I will bet money that chose that 25% cutoff level very precisely for a reason. I bet they simply moved that line up and down until it swung Republican.
How often have we heard from Leftists the inversion of the truth, that Red states are riding on the coattails of Blue states? (Yes, we DO hear that)
Those same people are going to point to this and say "See, we told you so!"
Seems like a bunch of bull crap to me. This person is an anti-Trump A-Hole. Probably has a copy of THIS up on their bookshelf:
Right. Doesn’t pass the smell test. I checked out the “Fact Check” he linked to in his “opinion” piece. See my post just above.
One does not bite the hand that feeds them.
Horse dung. The first hundred years of our history we were run on tariffs and liquor excise taxes. We are the market where everyone wants to sell. They either pony up for the privilege of using slave labor and sweatshops...OR they move production here and our economy explodes that way.
************************
Exactly,
I’m sick and tired of hearing from the import/export company crybabies.
They can pay their tax just like other consumers and businesses do with sales taxes.
The import company after paying the tax will have many choices:
1) try and raise prices, passing costs to consumers.
2) absorb costs on their spread or mark-up
3) Drive down pricing of the foreign producers
4) invest in domestic production
Whatever they do.......I don’t give a crap.
The main, traditional Sociable Insecurity pension program is NOT “Government Aid”
But there’s a reason the D’s won’t let it become privatized like, say, your 401k or IRA.
Because the D’s like forcing people to look to government (their government) as if citizens were dependent subjects or serfs.
It is about Power (and if the D’s can use YOUR tax money to enslave you, all the better!)
I fully believe in the concept of “Free Trade” but nothing like that exists that I see, most especially not with China.
Most especially.
Keep in mind that Blue Counties can have HUGE numbers of people, as in nearly 10 Million in Los Angeles County alone.
Social Security and Medicare are not “aid”. They are government-run forced retirement and insurance programs people paid into their entire working lives.
However food stamps and Medicaid are aid.
It’s the other way around. West Virginia and Kentucky are two of the states where Trump ran strongest in 2016 and 2020 … and on a per-capita basis, those states have more white people on welfare than any place in the world outside Ukraine or the UK.
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