The good odds are is that everyone reading this is on "welfare". By that, I do not mean that they are receiving a check each month, nor do I mean that they are not working, what I mean is that they are receiving more goods and services from the government (Federal, State and local) then they are paying in. This does not make them bad - I am myself in that group.
What it reflects, though they are not taught to know this, is that there is such a thing as a "social surplus". A social surplus is when the sum of created wealth of the nation exceeds - greatly exceeds - the total of each individual's wealth creating abilities. Thus ten men who might each catch a five pound rabbit - for a total of fifty pounds of meat - can together hunt and kill a bear, for a total of 500 pounds of meat!
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| In America, welfare is generally gave to the best dresser. |
Who then decides how that "extra" 450 pounds of meat is distributed - be it to some of the fruit and nut gatherers, or to the medicine man, or to the chief, or to the elderly who cannot hunt and gather any more or to poor Og who lost an arm to a saber tooth tiger, well, that can be - and has been - debated for generations. But it is "extra", it is a "social surplus", and it is a thing that can be took without feeling shame. Og, in other words, has as much moral right to eat as the chief.
Some nowadays disagree. Some worry that we can't really have a society in which a bunch of bear meat - or modern benefits - are owed each and every citizen by "right". What they fail to realize, particularly the Republicans who love to cry "socialism" about any new thing, is just how much welfare so many already get. If "welfare" means "something you get above and beyond what you personally worked for".
Can a society then, even at an industrial level, give out more to people than they have put in?
The answer is "yes", because it is more than possible for a society to be made up of a majority of people accepting things far beyond their means of paying for it. I know that it is, because we are living in that very society now. A society in which the vast majority of citizens - of ALL political parties - receive far more than they personally pay taxes for.
Surprise! Didn't know that most Americans in general, including welfare hating Republicans, were on welfare? Well, here are some (and only some) of the benefits that are already "socialized" and thus "free" that your average Americans enjoy, utterly rely upon and completely take for granted:
Free roads, street lights, education, immunizations, police protection, courts, military, health care, water, sewer and retirement. In each case, hilariously, the average welfare hater will laughably pretend that his taxes cover this. He being such a "working man". A trans-continental interstate highway system from sea to shining sea? Oh, that was his taxes. The state road network? Yep, his taxes. The local roads he most rides upon? Yep, it's all his taxes!
Forgetting that just those listed "road welfare" programs have vastly exceeded the average working man's "taxes", he will then blithely assure you that his taxes are paying for all the street lights, and that his taxes paid for his kids - two or three of them on average - to have attended a public school that invested $8,000 per child per year!
Yeah. In "welfare hating" world, the good old boy making $45,000 a year will honestly believe that his three kids had their $24,000 per year education paid for by his own taxes. Well, the taxes he had left over after paying for all those roads. And a 270 man police force where they each bring in more than he does. And 200 more in the Sheriff's department. And 3,000 more State police. And our two million service members in a military so vast that the next 25 nations combined spend less than we do. And courts where herds of $75,000 per year judges stand ready to listen to him dispute a parking ticket, leave his wife or argue with his neighbor!
In 2015, the Federal budget divided by the number of people amounted to $12,000 per person. In Illinois, expenditures divided by the populace works out to another $5,200 per person. Then there's the additional expense for if you are sending kids to school. Let's call that $16,000 for two kids. Then there's your local tax liability, which for Springfield, Illinois (An "anytown" if ever there was one) is $2,116. Yeah, that's right. If you aren't paying $35,316 per year in taxes - income, property and sales - then you're a welfare leech.
(And if you are paying $35,316 per year in taxes, congrats, but I think some of you savvier ones are already noticing that we get a pretty darn good deal at that price. Yes, that's right - that's the social surplus I keep mentioning, or how people working together generate more than the sum of their parts!)
Now, given that half of all workers in America don't even make $35,000 per year, let alone pay that much in taxes, this shows them clearly as on welfare. And given that most people, even making as much as $150,000 are still paying less than $35,000 in taxes, this has them as "on the dole", too! So when a Republican - or anyone else - hates on welfare, he's hating with a broader brush than I suspect he knows. Well, if he hated on all those examples, anyway, which odds are, he does not.
And you probably are - or will be - even more on welfare, eventually, if you aren't already. Yes, really. Because we haven't even really mentioned yet that largest of all welfare programs called "social security". You know, that program where you pay taxes all your life, have your representatives spend that money as fast as it comes in on stuff YOU watched them vote for, then at the end pretend that you had really "saved" it all along and now want it back? And sock it to the next generation of working men? The way your grandparents have socked it to you?
Ponzi much, welfare bum? I mean, you can't say you don't know it works this way, as you're already complaining about how it "better still be there for you" even though you also complain that you "know it's bankrupt now". Yeah. You do know that it's bankrupt, or you're the last person in America who didn't know that. And you are counting on it, or you're the only person in America who isn't.
Oh, but none of those are the socialistic welfare programs that Republicans mind, are they? No, we know that they don't really mind all those. And they certainly don't mind the billion dollar bailouts to Wall Street, the quantitative easings, the no-bid contracts, the sweet heart deals, no "welfare" there, huh? Well, none they complain of, anyway.
What welfare do welfare haters and Republicans in general mind then? What welfare are they speaking of if not the welfare they grab with both hands and/or nod approvingly of when corporate plutocrats grab it?
The "least" kind, that's what kind they hate. There's about 600 billion dollars out of a close to 4 trillion dollar budget spent on kids of single mothers, hungry people, poor people in need of medical aid, the disabled, and...yeah, that's about it. Apparently some of those people might not be as hungry as they claim, or maybe that blind person could "get a job" at something that doesn't require eyes, or maybe that single mother should sell one of her kids (or just "rent" her out) to buy food for the the other one like the "market oriented" nations make them do. (Yes, India, I'm looking at you.)
Oh, a Republican would not put it that way, but this is what it boils down to every time you hear one of them piously discussing about how "I don't mind the truly needy having it, me having such a big heart and all, but what of those cheaters who are draining the system?"
Yet the "cheaters" they are worried about are not Lockheed-Martin or Goldman-Sachs or Chrysler or Fannie Mae. No, those billion dollar cheaters are not what keeps them up at night. But did Leroy not report to LINK about that part time job he got at Burger King till two more weeks went by, thus letting him scam a last $192 worth of groceries? Including, it was reliably reported, a two liter bottle of soda, which if he was really hungry, should have been another loaf of bread?
Or how about Juanita? Is Juanita living the "high life"? After all, she has two kids, one is disabled and so she gets $700 per month in disability checks. She also gets food stamps for her and two kids. And an apartment, cramped and in the dirty part of town, but for real cheap. Her neighbors are often junkies and thieves and she fears for her kids and has to be a nurse to the one, but hey, she's not "working", right? And that one time, didn't some one peek inside and see that she had a TV?
Damn welfare queen. Bet she has a Walmart knock off iPhone, too.
And what of Bubba Lee? Would he have gone to the clinic for his headache if healthcare wasn't socialized? Bet he was just seeking the kind of quality of life medication that is justly reserved for those who can afford private healthcare, huh? And what's with taking his kid to the clinic for a fever of 103? If he'd just buy an AC unit for his trailer, the kid would cool off just fine without him being a tax leech, huh?
Yeah, while $300 hammers are being sold to the Department of Defense by the truck loads, while trillions are spent in re-building the very nations we bombed out, while robot ships are plying the outer edges of our Solar System, the Republican knows what "welfare" to worry about.
Just the welfare that goes to any who are in any way plausibly needy. Just the kind that goes to the poor. Just the kind that goes to the least of these our brethren. That welfare needs means testing, in depth interviews, fine tooth combs, urine testing and to be scrutinized in general with a magnifying glass that would put the Hubble telescope to shame.
Any one else's welfare is just fine.
Including their own.
