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
“dependent on government aid”
Look at Northern Virginia and Maryland on the map.
Supposedly not much “government aid” there.
But why do so many companies have offices there?
Do they make anything in those offices?
No! They’re lobbying for goodies from the government.
This is just an extension of the “red state moocher lie that Daniel Patrick Moynihan started and many liberal non profits have extended.
Reading that header I thought the article was going to be about federal subsidies to Hollywood movie studios.
Thank you
If you want the most material possessions for the greatest number of people in your society, then “free trade” is the way to go.
If you want your domestic industries to thrive and you’re willing to accept lower living standards for your working population, then tariff protections are essential.
No matter what anyone with a political agenda tells you, you can’t have them both at the same time — unless you’re willing to accept massive fascist government intervention on both sides. This is how you end up with a federal government that is $35 trillion in debt.
Yes...I believe that was the root of what I was referring to. As far as I am concerned, it is just another method they use to lie. There are plenty of receptive brains-full-of-mush out there, that is for sure.
It’s “THE MAP” again. If you know, you know.
The Stunning and Growing Dependence on Government Aid in Pictures
All. By. Design.
You beat me to it.
I wonder if they are counting everyone on Medicare and SS as being *dependent* on the government.
We certainly aren’t but Medicare is forced onto you when you hit 65 and I paid into SS. Might as well collect while there’s still some left.
Of course, if the government put into practice policies that favored independence in financial responsibility, you’d see fewer people using the government.
There are always the lazy ones though, who just suck off the government teat because they can.
Same thoughts. Soc. Sec. isn’t aid, it’s what I paid into and am finally getting back.
Using Social Security and Medicare will queer all these conversations.
Almost no one is interested in the 69 and 79 year old and whatever government program she is plugged into after a lifetime of working and living and raising a family and slogging the slog of life, but we are interested in the crippling largesse of dependency and government handouts to 19 and 29 and 39 year olds who are being mentally and emotionally (and politically) crippled and financially supported out of the productive life cycles and their useful participation in the nation’s health and growth.
Measuring by counties is meaningless.
Van Horn county (or whatever it is called over near me) has maybe 100 people in it. Roughly 48% are illegal and 48% are drug addicts with 3 ranchers doing work.
"Americans' Stunning And Growing Dependence On Government Aid In Pictures"
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
Vote-buying interpretations the Constitution's General Welfare Clause by desperate elite Democrats aside, it remains that the states have never expressly constitutionally given the unconstitutionally big federal government the specific power to tax and spend for national welfare of any kind.
Regarding growing dependence on corrupt federal government, Democratic and Republican Trump supporters need to support hopeful Trump 47 with a new Constitution-respecting Congress in November.
The new Congress needs to support Trump in leading the states to repeal Congress's 16th Amendment-powers (direct taxes) so that taxpayers struggling to eat and pay their bills will be better able to get themselves through difficult times. The 17th Amendment, popular voting for federal senators, can disappear too.
In fact, Justice Joseph Story had not only noted that the states have never expressly constitutionally given the big, bad feds the specific power to establish a national welfare program, but the congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker, had likewise clarified that constitutional drafters had left the care of the people uniquely to the states, NOT the federal government.
"16th Amendment : The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived [emphasis added], without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"The power to regulate manufactures is no more confided to congress, than the power to interfere with the systems of education, the poor laws, or the road laws of the states [emphasis added]." —Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 2, 1833.
The congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker, had clarified the federal government's constitutionally limited powers as follows.
”Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government [emphases added]. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country.” —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]." —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Finally, let's not allow the anti-Trump media try to fade our memories of what we witnessed on July 13.
Down the Memory Hole: Google Hides Autocomplete Suggestions Related to Trump Assassination Attempt (7.28.24)
Social Security isn’t government aid, it’s a return on the forced investment that everyone that worked paid into all their working years.
Of course, anybody collecting SS benefits that did NOT pay into it is on Government Aid.
Republicans talked about privatizing SS a couple of decades ago, and that would have been great. Of course, the left poo-poo’ed the idea since they wanted to use that money for THEIR projects (primarily, buying votes with other people’s money)
Income tax is a tax on American labor. Tariffs are a tax on foreign labor. Tax the foreign labor, not the American labor.
There’s a bigger reason why measuring by county is deceptive and meaningless. Some of the biggest government programs involve payments to retired people regardless of where they live — even if they were productive taxpayers for their entire working lives. So if I work in New York for 40 years and then retire in Florida, I was counted as a “taxpayer” in New York but I’m considered a “recipient of government aid” in Florida.
COVID money sealed the deal for the communists in D.C. After taking over the schools and state goverments the commies figured out how to print up money and have the cities and counties sign their independence away to be beholden to the rules of the federal government.
bkmk
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