Sunday, January 25, 2015

How America Has Stopped Being America

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% of GDP 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 one federal dollar in four (24%) in 1963 to almost three out of five (59%) 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 likely that this year, a majority of Americans will seek and receive payments.
This is not largely due to 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 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 rose from 19 million to 51 million, more than the combined populations of 24 states.
Read the rest of this George Will op-ed HERE.

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