ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE CONSERVATIVES: “IT’S THE FAULT OF THE POOR!”

 

Per the conservative George Will:  “America today does not look exceptional at all.”

 

You know, just when you think someone has reached the end of their rope, they then add another section and just keep going downhill.

That good ole conservative prognosticator, George Will, has now gone and blamed all the issues that the disadvantaged and the poor have had to deal with over the last 2-3 decades on, guess who?  Oh yes, on themselves.

First, he refers to all the increases in payments of what he calls “entitlements”, basically on the people that are currently receiving them.  In addition, like many conservatives, he continues to include Social Security and Medicare into what he calls “entitlements”, even though most of us have been paying into those funds for most of our working lives.  By definition, “entitlements” are not from funds that were paid for by the participants that had paid into them.

The "Will-ster" then refers to increases of twice as many households that are now receiving government benefits, than there were in 1963.  He claims that the responsibility of that 100% increase is due to those that are receiving those benefits today.  Yep, the increase is due to those individuals that are currently receiving government paychecks or food stamps.

Obviously, there is no mention that one of the reasons for these increases is that most of the jobs since the 1960’s have disappeared where all you needed was a high school education to get a good paying job.  He doesn’t mention anything about the increase in the large baby-boomer generation that has been slowly leaving the nation’s work force, or the vast increase in veterans from the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan that are no longer able to contribute to the nations’ GDP.  There is also no mention that due to all the conservatives in congress over the past 3 decades, wages and incomes of middle-class Americans have been allowed to stagnate and many American families have been forced to go on welfare or food stamps.  (In addition, no mention that companies like Wal-Mart have full-time employees today whose wages are so low they are still eligible to receive food stamps.)

Mr. Will then has the gall to say that this expanding dependency is “…erasing Americans’ traditional distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor”. 

So, apparently, his understanding is that we Americans are now giving people benefits that don’t deserve to receive them because they aren’t really poor.  I guess he thinks all the homeless we see on the streets, those living in the “homeless Jungles” along local creeks and rivers and those with cardboard signs on the streets asking for handouts, they are all “faking” being destitute.

 

…A sign that is way too common in today's American cities and towns.

Basically, Mr. Will says that Americans no longer have the “traditional distinction of deserving to receive help”  which was previously “…in this nation’s exceptional sense that poverty is not the unalterable accident of birth and is related to traditions of generosity arising from immigrant and settler experiences”.

So, I guess what he’s trying to say is that today, poor Americans are all just lazy and are going after all the government support they can get instead of getting a job and paying their fair share of taxes.  You know, they are all just trying to get on the “government dole”.

Now that particular situation sounds to me more like former VP, Dick Cheney’s, Haliburton Corporation, instead of the poor or the military vets that are currently surviving on America’s streets.

So, where does Mr. Will obtain all this information for substantiating his claims against those receiving today’s government support?

As expected, his info comes from another conservative political economist, Mr. Nicholas Eberstadt.  Also as expected, Mr. Eberstadt is the Chairman of Political Economy at the highly conservative, DC think-tank, the  American Enterprise Institute (AEI)

Per Mr. Eberstadt’s, latest essay; “American Exceptionalism and the Entitlement State,” he argues that "today’s American entitlement state is extinguishing American exceptionalism".

Apparently, this issue couldn’t be due to the increasing divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” that has driven those that could previously support themselves to having to ask for some help from the government.  Nah, that would be way too simple of an answer.

According to Mr. Eberstadt, “Since 1970, Americans have become healthier, work has become less physically stressful, the workplace has become safer — and claims from Social Security Disability Insurance have increased almost sixfold. Such claims (including fraudulent ones) are gateways to a plethora of other payments.”

Once again, there is no comment about the fact that due to vast number of the nation’s Baby Boomers, of which I and my wife are, the number of increases in Social Security claims was already expected to increase today by about 400%, and that did not include those military vets or Americans that have honestly qualified for full disability.  These additional increases were not even considered 30 years ago.

Per the conservatives, it’s all those Americans avoiding the taking of a job, (of which there haven’t been many available) and they all just want to be what Ronald Reagan famously called the equivalent of “welfare queens”.  (Which BTW, no one was ever able to find that welfare queen that President Reagan claimed was driving around in a Cadillac, paid for with her welfare checks. Major US newspaper reporters tried for years, but failed to ever come up with or locate that “Cadillac Queen”.)

To finish his article, Mr. Will tell us that the weakening of America’s distinctive conceptions of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and self-advancement are, rending the national fabric, and as a result, “America today does not look exceptional at all.”

So, George Will is writing off the American public as just being a bunch of parasites living off of the government, but he has nothing to say about the many US corporations that put their fortunes in off shore accounts, send American jobs overseas and use all the lobbyist sponsored tax loop holes for paying zero in US taxes.

Nosiree, on problem with these so called “job creators”.

Yes sir, the problems are all because of those middle-class and poor leeches that are living off of food stamps and their welfare and disability payments.

I guess if that’s George’s point-of-view, I would suggest that George start looking for some other country to live in as this one is obviously, from his position, going to hell-in-a-hand-basket.

Personally, I would prefer to put my long-term trust in the ethics and grit of the average working American. 

Yes…and I would sincerely love to say, “Sayonara George……….and don’t let the gate hit you in the ass on the way out!”

Copyright G.Ater  2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

America’s national character will have to be changed if progressives are going to implement their agenda. So, changing social norms is the progressive agenda. To understand how far this has advanced, and how difficult it will be to reverse the inculcation of dependency, consider the data Nicholas Eberstadt deploys in National Affairs quarterly:

America’s welfare state transfers more than 14 percent of gross domestic product to recipients, with more than a third of Americans taking “need-based” payments. In our wealthy society, the government officially treats an unprecedented portion of the population as “needy.”

 

Transfers of benefits to individuals through social welfare programs have increased from less than 1 federal dollar in 4 (24 percent) in 1963 to almost 3 out of 5 (59 percent) in 2013. In that half-century, entitlement payments were, Eberstadt says, America’s “fastest growing source of personal income,” growing twice as fast as all other real per capita personal income. It is probable that this year a majority of Americans will seek and receive payments.

 

This is not primarily because of Social Security and Medicare transfers to an aging population. Rather, the growth is overwhelmingly in means-tested entitlements. More than twice as many households receive “anti-poverty” benefits than receive Social Security or Medicare. Between 1983 and 2012, the population increased by almost 83 million — and people accepting means-tested benefits increased by 67 million. So, for every 100-person increase in the population there was an 80-person increase in the recipients of means-tested payments. Food stamp recipients increased from 19 million to 51 million — more than the combined populations of 24 states.

 

What has changed? Not the portion of the estimated population below the poverty line (15.2 percent in 1983; 15 percent in 2012). Rather, poverty programs have become untethered from the official designation of poverty: In 2012, more than half the recipients were not classified as poor but accepted being treated as needy. Expanding dependency requires erasing Americans’ traditional distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. This distinction was rooted in this nation’s exceptional sense that poverty is not the unalterable accident of birth and is related to traditions of generosity arising from immigrant and settler experiences.

 

Eberstadt’s essay, “American Exceptionalism and the Entitlement State,” argues that this state is extinguishing the former. America “arrived late to the 20th century’s entitlement party.” The welfare state’s European pedigree traces from post-1945 Britain, back through Sweden’s interwar “social democracy,” to Bismarck’s late-19th-century social insurance. European welfare states reflected European beliefs about poverty: Rigid class structures rooted in a feudal past meant meager opportunities for upward mobility based on merit. People were thought to be stuck in neediness through no fault of their own, and welfare states would reconcile people to intractable social structures.

 

Eberstadt notes that the structure of U.S. government spending “has been completely overturned within living memory,” resulting in the “remolding of daily life for ordinary Americans under the shadow of the entitlement state.” In two generations, the American family budget has been recast: In 1963, entitlement transfers were less than $1 out of every $15; by 2012, they were more than $1 out of every $6.

Causation works both ways between the rapid increase in family disintegration (from 1964 to 2012, the percentage of children born to unmarried women increased from 7 to 41) and the fact that, Eberstadt says, for many women, children and even working-age men, “the entitlement state is now the breadwinner of the household.” In the past 50 years, the fraction of civilian men ages 25 to 34 who were neither working nor looking for work approximately quadrupled.

 

Eberstadt believes that the entitlement state poses “character challenges” because it powerfully promotes certain habits, including habits of mind. These include corruption. Since 1970, Americans have become healthier, work has become less physically stressful, the workplace has become safer — and claims from Social Security Disability Insurance have increased almost sixfold. Such claims (including fraudulent ones) are gateways to a plethora of other payments.

 

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a lifelong New Deal liberal and accomplished social scientist, warned that “the issue of welfare is not what it costs those who provide it but what it costs those who receive it.” As a growing portion of the population succumbs to the entitlement state’s ever-expanding menu of temptations, the costs, Eberstadt concludes, include a transformation of the nation’s “political culture, sensibilities, and tradition,” the weakening of America’s distinctive “conceptions of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and self-advancement,” and perhaps a “rending of the national fabric.” As a result, “America today does not look exceptional at all.”