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.
3 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.
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