Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and ROBERT GEBELOFF
Published: February 11, 2012
LINDSTROM, Minn. — Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.
He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.
Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.
There is little poverty here in Chisago County, northeast of Minneapolis, where cheap housing for commuters is gradually replacing farmland. But Mr. Gulbranson and many other residents who describe themselves as self-sufficient members of the American middle class and as opponents of government largess are drawing more deeply on that government with each passing year.
Dozens of benefits programs provided an average of $6,583 for each man, woman and child in the county in 2009, a 69 percent increase from 2000 after adjusting for inflation. In Chisago, and across the nation, the government now provides almost $1 in benefits for every $4 in other income.
Older people get most of the benefits, primarily through Social Security and Medicare, but aid for the rest of the population has increased about as quickly through programs for the disabled, the unemployed, veterans and children.
The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.
And as more middle-class families like the Gulbransons land in the safety net in Chisago and similar communities, anger at the government has increased alongside. Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age.
The expansion of government benefits has become an issue in the presidential campaign. Rick Santorum, who won 57 percent of the vote in Chisago County in the Republican presidential caucuses last week, has warned of “the narcotic of government dependency.” Newt Gingrich has compared the safety net to a spider web. Mitt Romney has said the nation must choose between an “entitlement society” and an “opportunity society.” All the candidates, including Ron Paul, have promised to cut spending and further reduce taxes.
The problem by now is familiar to most. Politicians have expanded the safety net without a commensurate increase in revenues, a primary reason for the government’s annual deficits and mushrooming debt.
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Read the full item. Again, here. It is longer than many online items, but try for an expanded attention span because reading the full item is worth your time. (It is not as if I suggest you read all 1311 comments too, although you might want to scan a bit of the comment thread, to see how the item resonated with readers - those caring to take the time to add a thought of their own or two.)
So, either become an irrational tax-rebel Tea Partier, ranting against all government handouts except the ones to you, or become an advocate of better sharing of the wealth, and of the income from it.
Capitalism, as a system is premised upon capital being the key factor of production, more important than labor, more important than raw materials, with its efficient use being key to economic efficiency and prosperity, of the whole. However, nothing in that standard scenario says the fat plutocrats have to take it all, and give table scraps to the 99%. That - taking the lion's share because the system is set up so you can - that is merely a politics of greed, not any economic theory of factors of production being efficiently utilized.
There simply is no proof that allowing the bulk of wealth, income and power to be concentrated at the top is at all decent or efficient. Stories such as the New York Times item show that the government is not aimed at evll looting of everyone, to benefit nobody.
Proof seems to be that it's most fine for the plutocrats, and it can be something like jail time for a major part of the remainder of our society.
What the student-loan setup, and the rising cost of gaining a post-secondary school education, and bankruptcy law is putting on the younger non-wealthy but college educated generation, that is simply obscene. That is where government fails most. It is probably one of the first things that needs to be fixed - to again allow a chance of social and economic mobility for those not born into wealth. As it was in the 1950's and 1960's.
Without decency toward the young, they will be too vulnerable to propaganda making them resent the bulk of older generations, instead of rightly seeing it is only a small top fraction of those older folks that are screwing them royally and need to be, one way or another, stopped.
The Helmsleys of our world need to be hammered down. Now is not soon enough. Tomorrow will only be later. So do it now. All the people with grievances over how things are happening in our nation need to have the good sense to ignore Rupert Murdoch, a one-percenter for sure with his heart exactly where his pocketbook is, and they need to ignore his paid barking dog pound, and try something entirely new in their lives, thinking for themselves about how wealthy a nation is, how hard things can be for themselves, their family, or for folks they know well, and why that gap between wealth of a nation and the personal well being of many exists. Then, what should be done about it?
_____________UPDATE_____________
Yesterday, Feb. 16, Brauer at MinnPost reports the story behind the story, "How the New York Times got the Chisago County entitlements story." Brauer's analysis reaches the "editorial" choices - picking Chisago County, Minnesots, vs Nebraska or Arizona, making it a story reporting an extent of dependence upon government entitlements along with attitudes against the government, and entitlement programs being challenged. From the perspective that government exists, in a proper world, to protect the poor from the wealthy and the wealthy from each other, i.e., not only to level the playing field, but to redistribute the score after the game's run; then the irony of the story is how could anyone think such a basic distributive decency within government is wrong and that law of the jungle is how our nation and people should strive to be both moral and great. Law of the jungle is fine for predators. Not so hot for the prey except as with the Wildebeest, where the prey reproduces at such a rate that the predators have a sufficient pool to exploit without a total deprivation of the prey population. If the prey do not reproduce sufficiently, then the predators either face extinction or eating one another. It is a kind of law of the jungle slant to the contraception question, reflecting on those who most vocally oppose contraception. They need a sufficient prey pool to prosper and thrive, in their way of staying alive and comfortable. What can be outsourced is being outsourced, but where the prey function is local and cannot be outsourced, that prey pool has to be local. The lion cannot outsource its direct lunch needs. That also helps illimunate law of the jungle views of the immigration question.