How the US Government Buys Votes

[Kasz216]

kanageddaamen said:

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.

That's really only true if you don't know how Social Security actually works.

Social Security already had to be reformed once to prevent it from crashing.

If there is a shortfall in social security taxes, it causes government debt... but if there is a social security surplus it ALSO causes debt.

Reason is...  there is no social security "Locked Box."  Which is why Gore always talkd about a "Locked Box" to fix social security.

As it is now, any social security surplus is spent and replaced with government bonds.   Aka government debt, (with interest!) that it has to pay off.

To say it's not causing debt is like argueing that a credit card doesn't cause debt... but in fact adds to your income!