Despite the cocophany of complaining you hear from the left about how things are so horrible and that the plight of the poor is getting worse,
remember, a little dose of reality provide a lot of clarity.
For if you look at the federal budget over time and how we've "voted" to spend our money, you'll note that wealth redistribution programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, welfare and so forth have taken a larger and larger percentage of the budget.
Going from all of 3% in 1943, this has now ballooned to over 64% in 2005, suggesting (nay, convicting) the government of not so much being an agent of governance as it is a political agent of wealth redistribution.
Consider the total percentage of the nation's wealth that has been redistributed and it is very clear who is winning the ideological battle of economics;
Going from under 2% in 1947 now a full 12% is redistributed.
And when you consider that the two largest wealth redistribution programs (Medicare and Social Security) are going to balloon in the next 20 years;
Alas, it seems Chairman Mao himself could not have wished for a better outcome of the world's soon to be No. 2 Superpower.
8 comments:
Which line items on the budget are considered "redistributions?"
From 1940-1961 the budget included general vague things like "health" and I tried my best to correlate it with the 1962-present data which was much more detailed. But basically it's composed of;
Medicare, medicaid, social security, income security, agricultural subsidies, education (although this really didn't add up to much), and health. There was another thing, but I forgot what it was.
Great article. Great graphs of course. Consider this one linked.
To be fair, the percentage of the budget devoted to redistribution was so low in the early '40s only because redistribution was dwarfed by the spike in military spending for World War II. Not that the GDP graph isn't damning enough.
Damn redistributions! I hope the U.S. libertarian party gets a few house representatives or maybe even a Senator (praying for a miracle) just to help slow down that big government.
Not a chance of that. The closest is Ron Paul, who had to run as a Republican. The Libertarian Party is infested with Anarchists and weirdos.
That's why i came back to the GOP
Yeah in a way I have to agree. There are some dingshlings in the Libertarian Party. But they have some good ideas and if (if being the key word) they ever did get in they would slow down big gov.
The best parts of the GOP is Republican Liberty Caucas and the Club for Growth.
Agree on all points
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