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When you measure transfer payments from the taxpayers to citizens and see which income group of americans gets the largesse, well it is the upper 20%, the top quintile, that gets the largest amount per capita in transfer payments.

What are you including under the catch-all heading of 'transfer payments' to the top quintile? Social Security? Medicare? Something else?

that's a good question. and I read this stat a long time ago I'm not 100% sure it's still current, but I bet it is. But the article I read said transfer payments were just transfering money from the taxpayers to individuals and not for salaries, but just transferring the money for some other reason. THis would be welfare, social security, medicaire, agriculture subsidies, low income housing tax credits, these types of things called corporate welfare. any time they transfer money to somebody just for income redistribution. The agriculture subsidies today are massive. The farmers who get em are almost all millionaires. The low income housing tax credits are much bigger today than 10 years ago. These go straight to big corps that have a lot of money. I used to work in lowincome housing tax credits. The big rich corps benefit a lot more from that program than the poor. One reason some people get rich is they find a government program that pays out money for this purpose or that and they fill out applications to get the money. It happens a lot. People understand that social security is generally a welfare program because the beneficiaries of social security generally don't pay their own way, they receive transfer payments. But a lot of people don't know that the upper income people over 65 get a lot more in transfer payments than the poor over 65 get. Social security historically gives back a lot more than you pay in, but if you are upper income your money is multiplied much more than if you are poor. The whole idea that our federal budget is so big because of compassion for the poor is just silly. IT's not true at all. We spend money in every direction. The bureaucrats benefit a lot more than the poor. And as I said the rich get more in transfer payments than the poor do. THe middle class get little compared to either the rich or tte poor. Just trying to clear up misconceptions.