How the US Government Buys Votes

[kanageddaamen]

Rath said:

HappySqurriel said:
Entitlement spending is (typically) voted in with the best of intentions, and makes the problems it was designed to fix dramatically worse over time. The reason for this is that these programs are designed to address the symptoms of a problem and there is almost no consideration of the reaction the social program will have.

If we stopped paying people not to work, subsidizing companies for paying employees below living wages, increasing costs on companies for paying reasonable wages, and taxing efficiency and success all the people who currently receive government handouts could be working to achieve as high (or higher) standard of living.

 Even in a very healthy economy there is 5-6% unemployment. Those people would be screwed without government handouts.

Also note that Social Security, the largest entitlement program, has not added a single dollar of debt, and is in fact raided annually for funding other programs.