Posted on 03/08/2011 1:51:02 PM PST by kcvl
Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement.
Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.
“The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients. “Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.”
The economist gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, “either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,” she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
It offends me to no end when people lump persons who paid their $ into Social Security/Medicare by mandate of the thieves and then get likened to bums who are on the dole when all we want is our $ back.
They stole and squandered more than enough to pay out. Suddenly the thieves are the victims and the people whose money disappeared are the bad guys?
Reprehensible. Again, no justice for the middle class who is greatly impacted by this.
Your argument misses any cause/effect/resolution that INCLUDES those who are just parasitic.
Well it hasn't worked out, has it? The economy is contracting, we are barely replacing our native population and Congress gives away other people's money to get reelected.
What you or me or anyone else put into the corrupt system designed to reelect democrats is irrelevant.
To say that people whom receive social security medicare and medicaid are receiving an entitlement. Stop and think a moment.
Public Sector Employees whom are dependent upon the taxpayers to pay for these are the same people whom pay nothing or very little towards their own pensions. Here is the entitlement mentality too. Yet they expect the taxpayer whom has had to lose or suffer a reduction of many of the same benefits that they feel is their right.
Lets say a taxpayer whose income is at 40,000.00, whom had to take a cut in salary, reduction in benefits, payment towards health insurance increased, his pension or 401K reduced or eliminated and the neighbor next door whose income is 85,000.00 as a teacher and pays nothing towards pension nor healthcare and is now angry that they will have to pay very little towards healthcare insurance and a pension.
So the entitlement mentality is just as sinificant by the public sector employee.
Okay look at a politician in DC, salary of in excess of 170,000.00. lifetime healthcare and a lifetime pension for 10 or more years of service. They scream and holler on term limits because if they do not get the 10 years in they do not get the benefits they feel they are entitled too. Keep in mind a politician gets money and other perks from lobbyists. So actually the salary is a base salary and they live in style.
Oddly enough cutting the salary and freezing the lobbyists money will not end the corruption because the politicians are just plain greedy bastards whom should have no income paid at all. The bastards need to have the constituents in their districts set their salaries at the level of the constituents median salaries. (Man would the politicians scream if the median salaries in their districts is only 50,000.00)
Even worse, it’s coming from people on Free Republic, not just the libs. I wonder how they’ll feel when the same exact line of attack is used to shame and eventually grab their 401ks and other legitimate retirement funds?
I overheard the other day a YOUNG grandmother talking about her granddaughter receiving over $2,000 a MONTH from the goverment! I have been so po'd ever since just thinking about how much we are about to send with our damn TAX RETURN!
That is just ONE freaking welfare kid, ONE! This grandmother has another child who receives a 'CRAZY CHECK' (payment from Medicaid or S.S.I. which is made purportedly for a disability suffered by the payee)! Alarmingly, crazy checks are often approved for simple and common conditions such as a child (usually in a single-parent household) who can't behave in school.
It is NOTHING but FRAUD!
People like you just amaze me. “Handouts”? Social Security is part of our retirement. We EARNED it. Sheesh. Jerks.
Do you know, can you enter the work force without paying the social security tax? Is this a mandated law or is it unknowningly voluntary? I'm serious when I ask this.
I started paying in to social security when I was 14. I'm over 50 now. Did I make a decision at 14 that I didn't understand?
For example, the last fiscal YTD, it lists SS receipts of 205,933 million and 64,393 million (off and on budget, whatever that means). But for the current YTD those figures drop to 190,877 million $ and 62,960 million $. So much for recovery!
Lazy? I worked starting at age 16. SS was taken out of all of my checks until the day I retired. And you have the nerve to call me LAZY?
THANKS very much!!!
Now I have to do some compilation.
Errrrr, no. We paid in and I will get nothing, ever. Either we have saved enough or we have not.......and next they will come for that.....pull your head out.....
I agree that people who paid in nothing or a small amount are getting more than they paid in. That is a social policy question of whether we have a “safety net” for those who have no money. But what I am saying is that the Social Security system is only going to be sustained at its current levels with a massive tax increase on future taxpayers who already are going to be paying interest on our debt. It simply can’t be done. I’m not talking about eliminating Social Security. I’m talking about the same things that are on the table—raising the retirement age to 70 or 72. Capping the top benefit and gradually weening the middle class off of this transfer payment heroin. Rolling all taxes into the general tax and not pretending that people are “paying into” some retirement savings account.
You tell ‘em, baby. That’s right.
Those who refer to Social Security benefits as a ‘handout’ have no political future.
Uh, did they forget Medicaid which is the pig trough of the illegals?
I'm way beyond offended. I'm totally pissed off that the asshole that wrote this article thinks I receive a government handout.
If I were on SSI or Medicaid or unemployment I'd STFU. But I paid into Social Security and Medicare all my life. Now it's payback time. It is not my fault that the idiots running the system have completely mismanaged the money they took from me.
Time to pay the piper.
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