These 11 States Now Have More People on Welfare Than They Do Working.
The Obama Administration Must Be So Proud of This Truly Remarkable Accomplishment.
WOW! WHAT A RECORD!
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
46 comments:
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Does that include those on SSI Disability?
ReplyDeleteLet me see if I understand this correctly. We keep allowing more Illegal immigrants into American and they keep collecting Food Stamps and going on welfare, and Obama thinks that's a Good Thing!
ReplyDeleteWhy does it seem like Barack Obama has been doing everything that he can to sabotage our economy, and our security by promoting more, and more illegal immigration? Am I missing something here?
And the Progressives think that he’s brilliant!
These people get housing assistance, food stamps, welfare, free education for their children, free medical (all they have to do is walk into any emergency room and they have to be treated!)...all of that needs to be reserved for citizens....I’m sorry mate, but illegal’s should not be rewarded for breaking our immigration laws! Doesn’t the word illegal mean criminal?
During President Barack Obama’s first term, the number of Americans collecting federal disability insurance increased by 1,385,418 to a record 8,827,795.
ReplyDeleteAs a result, there is now one person collecting disability in this county for every 13 people working full-time.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/deathspiral.asp
ReplyDeletealso,
http://xkcd.com/386/
Jez: Thanks for the clarification. Point well taken.
ReplyDeleteHaving cleared that up, these states are in a death spiral.
California, Illinois and NY being in the deepest financial hole.
In Illinois, where much of my kinfolk have the misfortune of living, the politicians have raided the pension funds, and are now over $80 billion in arrears.
NY state is not much better.
California is the Progressive Poster Child, and it has one of the highest percentages of people on the dole, and it's population remains flat as productive people flee the state.
So while a few superficialities of this post are incorrect, these states are in a death spiral, and bi-partisan economic progressivism is to blame, although it is worth noting that the worst three states(Ill, NY, Cali) are all exclusive Democrat joints. As is the failed city of Detroit.
Economic freedom works. Big State Progressivism is a vampire.
This is the problem. Instead of encouraging self-sufficiency, government peddles drugs:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.benefits.gov/
When you read their nifty little phrase "Search for what government benefits you may be eligible to receive"
What it should really say is "Search for a reason to make the statist bureaucracy reach into a working person's pocket, shake them down, and give the money to you."
When the available funds from the tax base are less than the funds being consumed by the takers, bankruptcy for all must ensue -- as will class warfare.
ReplyDeleteAbout SSDI....It used to be that the only qualifiers were severe cardiac problems, debilitating stroke, multiple sclerosis, brain cancer, and the like.
ReplyDeleteNow, if you have a backache, you might be able to collect at least partial SSDI.
When Mr. AOW applied for SSDI after his stroke in 2009, the SSA told me, "He could have been collecting partial SSDI since 1993. He should have applied back then." In 1993, Mr. AOW had surgery for acoustic neuroma; the surgery left him deaf in one ear and with short-term memory loss as well as mild clinical depression, diabetes, and sleep apnea. As a result, he had to change careers -- from the somewhat lucrative career of automotive service manager to nearly-minimum-wage warehouse worker.
About Medicaid....It used to be only for children in need. Now, some 80% of the ailing elderly are receiving Medicaid.
Anyway, my point is that the bar for receiving government assistance has been lowered a lot in the past few years.
It's a Pants on Fire lie.
ReplyDeletePolitiFact:
Our ruling
Ripping off a map that was created for a different fiscal comparison, the chain email said 11 states had more residents on welfare than employed.
By either a broad definition of welfare or a narrow one, experts told us that’s a false and even "extreme" statement. Pants on Fire!
From FactCheck.org:
Q: Do 11 states now have more people on welfare than they have employed?
A: A viral email making this claim is off base. It distorts a Forbes article that compares private-sector workers with those “dependent on the government,” including government workers and pensioners, and Medicaid recipients — not just “people on welfare.”
SNOPES
I'm surprised you'd use an email chain letter without investigating whether or not it is factual.
False. False. False.
SNOPES has a profound bias in favor of the LEFT. It should be patently obvious to anyone but a left wing partisan or an out-and-out moron.
ReplyDeleteBecause of this, I do not accept SNOPES as the Supreme Authority on ANYTHING. They -- like every other organization involved in the Public Information Game these days -- is lute but yet-another propagandist for a biased point of view.
Tendentious research is not worth much if anything at all.
As Kurt said, there may be a few superficial aspects of the "Welfare Map" that could be called "inaccurate," but the PRINCIPLES we are in the process of violating with flamboyant, nose-thumbing flippancy are of much greater concern than the selected "facts" our ideological opponents stockpile to hurl at us like so many grenades.
Like it or not we ARE at WAR, ladies and gentlemen, and has oft been quoted, "All's fair in love and war."
I see no reason to allow someone else's bigotry to eclipse my own. ;-)
FactCheck.org is run by the ANNENBERG FOUNDATION.
ReplyDeleteScratch that IMMEDIATELY. They're a rotten bunch of COMMUNISTS.
And so we have Shaw believing it, what else is new?
DeleteCommies of a feather flock together.
I truly wish GWB could have presided over the aftermath of his two terms. Why you may ask. Well I suppose it is because it would have been quite an eye opener for most I'm sure.
DeleteWe would probably be about where we're at. Of course this is just hunch. Can anybody say Oligarchs.
Hear the voices, Freethinker?
ReplyDeleteIt's your corner men yelling "stay down".
At any rate the number on assistance is a descriptive variable and in itself cannot give us any insight into the merits of policy.
Three different sites say this post is false, and your answer to that is that they're Communists?
ReplyDeleteOkay. If you scream so.
The 12 states in the "death spiral" reported in the Forbes Magazine article, from whence came the misinformation in your email are the following:
Ohio
Hawaii
Illinois
Kentucky
South Carolina
New York
Maine
Alabama
California
Mississippi
New Mexico
7 out of those 12 states have been traditionally Red States and/or have Republican governors running the death spiraling:
Ohio, Kentucky, South Carolina, Maine, Alabama, Mississippi, and New Mexico.
Also, California had Aaaahnold as its governor for 8 years.
What? He had to work with the opposition party? The Democrats? And that's why he left the state in a death spiral?
New York's GOP governor Pataki: 1995 - 2006
Pataki had to work with the opposition party? The Dems?
Tell me about it.
SF may be right.
ReplyDeleteFreethinke, notice how your defence of propaganda techniques only distracts from the meat.
From ONE of the famed "REFUTATION" sites:
ReplyDelete" ... [The map was drawn from] a Forbes article ... [that] compares private-sector workers with those “dependent on the government,” including government workers and pensioners, and Medicaid recipients — not just “people on welfare.”
A twisted, legalistic interpretation that purports to "refute" the broad claim on the map, but instead presents indisputable evidence that an apparent majority of citizens living in each of the eleven selected states DOES, INDEED, live at the expense of the TAXPAYERS.
Calling that Welfare Dependent may not be strictly accurate by legal definition, but it fully supports the main thrust of today's item which is perfectly true in essence.
Once again we feel compelled to repeat Mrs. Thatcher's immortal words:
The Trouble with Socialism is that Sooner or Later You Run Out of Other Peoples' Money.
AMEN, Maggie! AMEN!
Or was it Winnie who said it first? Doesn't matter, because it's TRUE.
Though the Intellectual Moronocracy would have you believe otherwise, FACTS are NOT synonymous with TRUTH.
When quoting Forbes the phrase "dependent on the government" was put in quotation marks -- as though that somehow called the validity of the statement into question.
I say, "BALLS!" This type or argumentation is nothing more than agenda-drive gamesmanshit. It has no genuine interest in getting at the truth whatsoever.
Not defending propaganda techniques, Jez, I am merely RECOGNIZING, and taking NOTE of them.
ReplyDeleteI will say that if that Welfare Map Item had originated with me, my headline would have read, A Majority in Each of These Eleven States is Dependent on Taxpayer's Money for Their Survival.
That, however, is cumbersome -- literal truth usually is, which is why we see so very little of it in popular organs of communication.
You can thank the Advertising Industry along with Television for this diminution in the average person's attention span. You may have heard of "The Dumbing Down of America?" There's a decent example.
Radical Redneck, illegal immigrants may contribute to this problem -- particularly in California -- but the problem originated with the advocates of Socialism -- the "Government as Santa Claus to the Poor philosophy.
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, Louis XIV created a similar situation when he established Versailles. Before Louis Quatorze France was comprised of myriad little duchy's and fiefdoms that were more or less autonomous. Louis built Versailles, invited all these aristocrats to join the court and seduced them with lavish entertainment and soon acclimated them to a soft easy, self-indulgent, sybaritic lifestyle -- at LOUIS'S expense.
What happened? The nobility in France became weaker and weaker. Eventually the aristocrats lost their independence. The court of Louis XIV became stronger and stronger, the power of the monarch ABSOLUTE.
Anyone see the point, or are you too preoccupied wit making weapons out of your little factoids fashioned solely for the defense of your naked partisanship?
WTF are you talking about?
ReplyDeleteShaw: The Forbes article is accurate. Those states are in big trouble.
ReplyDeleteAnd your partisan comments are hilarious (California and NY in the grips of evil Republicans?)
These and other fiscal disasters are brought to you by the financially-ignorant shameless lying progressive bastards of all parties.
Progressivism has the same problem as socialism: If fails once they run out of other people's money.
So if we pay taxes to finance a more efficient medical insurance program than the inefficient system offered by a for profit insurer, that's a bad choice Free?Thinker?
ReplyDeleteReally, next thing you know we'll have one of the drones chiming in on having their insurance controlled by a government employee and why that's undesirable compared to a minimum wage clerk incentivized to turn down claims at a for profit.
"Progressivism has the same problem as socialism: If fails once they run out of other people's money."
ReplyDeleteEvery economic system in the modern world has elements that are both capitalist (private ownership and / or administration) and socialist (public ownership and / or administration).
The two co-exist alongside each other, as they have done in every economic system since the beginning of time. Unless you want to make the postal service, police and fire departments, military, and education 100% private.
Progressivism IS Socialism, Kurt. Marxism, Socialism, Fabianism, Progressivism, Liberalism, Fascism, Statism are all arms of the same monstrous octopus -- or heads from the same hydra, if you prefer.
ReplyDeleteThe RESULTS of these things ALWAYS lead to diminished freedom, limited options, fewer choices, and OFTEN to grinding poverty, famine, violence and MEGADEATH.
If you've studied foreign real estate markets, as I have via the internet and on several trips abroad, in just about any country you could name in comparison to what is STILL available to the average person HERE, you would see immediately that not only is our country STILL exceptional, it is vastly -- and I mean VASTLY -- superior.
I don't know about Central and South America, because I would never consider living there, but the cost of extremely modest, cramped dwellings in Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Holland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark is PROHIBITIVE -- and the TAXES in any of those places would EAT YOU ALIVE.
Since I am a New Yorker by birth and conversant with a rich cosmopolitan culture, it stands to reason that I have known a great many European immigrants to this country, and not ONE of them would even DREAM of going back. They'd rather sweep floors, change linens in motels rooms, scrub toilets and change adult diapers in nursing homes than be a legal secretary, a school principal, a civil engineer, or own a bar and grill in any other country.
Every career or job I mentioned is an actual fact. I have KNOWN these people, personally. Some of them were my relatives.
Is living in the USA Heaven on Earth? Of course not, but it's vastly preferable to Russia, Hungary, Britain, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway or any of the other places I could mention.
I live in a beautiful, well-appointed 4,500-square-foot home. I admit I am very fortunate, but for what I've paid to live here I am I could not afford to purchase anything much bigger than a glorified broom closet on the fourth floor of a walkup in any of the more desirable cities in England and the continent.
Also, I have two lifelong friends who live as expatriates in London and Paris respectively. They are committed Socialists dedicated to the establishment of the New World Order, of course, and as such would ever admit to me how painfully limited their living conditions really are, but I have eyes, and I have seen, and believe me compared to what I have, it stinks to high heaven.
That said, from the TOURIST'S perspective, Britain and the continent are still magnificent repositories of scenic beauty, architectural wonders, art, music, incredibly good food and many wonderful people, BUT as the saying goes "It's a nice place to visit, but i wouldn't want to LIVE there.
To be fair the French expatriate says he has had very satisfactory experience with French-style socialized medicine, but then he lives on a tiny government stipend bolstered by a significant inheritance from his American parents, and has for the most part been extremely healthy. At age 71 he's still working, because he MUST. I do not envy him.
My London friends on the other hand have had truly dreadful experiences with the National Healthcare system in the Britain. The husband, now 72, has needed major surgery for several years ,and has been scheduled several times, then denied the procedure, and "put on hold" by this apparently overburdened, wholly inadequate system.
My London friends were both top students in high school, both hold advanced degrees from Ivy League Schools by the way, but don't like to talk about it, because they'd have to admit they've been WRONG to embrace Socialism and to reject the land of their birth.
Several British expatriate friends here -- from various walks of life -- have all said in effect, "Once you reach age sixty, the government encourages you to DIE as soon as possible."
And so it goes ...
The first thing you notice about capitalism is the reduction in population density.
ReplyDelete"[Capitalism and Socialism] co-exist alongside each other, as they have done in every economic system since the beginning of time."
ReplyDeletePIFFLE, Ms Shaw! First we had primitive tribalism ruled by by brutal warlords. Greece and Rome developed highly advanced societies, but, despite the high intellectual and artistic achievements of the Athenians, and the establishment of democratic-republican forms of government -- for the upper classes -- both these ancient societies depended on SLAVE LABOR to survive and prosper. Rome became a morally bankrupt, degenerate society known for its wanton cruelty, ruthless aggression, brutal subjugation and acquisition of other peoples' lands.
The Huns, the Goths and the Visigoths who eventually conquered Rome were primitive barbarians who ushered in The Dark Ages, which gave us Feudalism, where "nobles" were privileged to warm their feet on cold winter days in the steaming guts of the slashed-open bellies of helpless serfs, and every maidenhead was a potential prize for the Suzerain.
It was only the CHRISTIAN CHURCH that enabled literacy and what-we-know-of the learning of the ancient world to survive. The Church also fostered the Music, Art and Architecture that became the foundation for Western Civilization.
Capitalism is a relatively new phenomenon that began wth the emergence of a middle class.
Communism I see as a reaction to the admitted abuses of the Industrial Revolution, which came upon us much too suddenly to enable us to cope with the social and economic ramifications that came with it.
I believe we've been suffering from what-was-later-called "Future Shock" since the mid-nineteenth century.
"Unless you want to make the postal service, police and fire departments, military, and education 100% private."
The postal service is a looming disaster, public education is for the most part an abject failure. Police and Fire departments are usually handled by local communities not an over-arching Federal Government. Ergo, that leaves only the military -- and I would add development and maintenance of the infrastructure (water supply, sewage disposal and roads, bridges and tunnels, etc. -- to the forces of government.
@FT --- If you've studied foreign real estate markets, as I have via the internet and on several trips abroad, in just about any country you could name in comparison to what is STILL available to the average person HERE, you would see immediately that not only is our country STILL exceptional, it is vastly -- and I mean VASTLY -- superior.
ReplyDelete-----
Visit Australia often?
Free market capitalism and the economic growth and opportunity it brings has raised people out of poverty than any socialist program.
ReplyDeleteSocialism has done the opposite, miring people in sickness and misery.
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2013/03/26/friends_of_the_poor_are_their_greatest_enemies_100220.html
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/030613-647020-hugo-chavez-created-poverty-in-a-false-model-of-help-for-the-poor.htm
FT's got the best of the argument, Ducky. You traffic in tired dogma and piles of shibboleths.
@ Ducky: "So if we pay taxes to finance a more efficient medical insurance program than the inefficient system offered by a for profit insurer, that's a bad choice Free?Thinker?"
Your first task is to prove that Obama care is in any way efficient.
Your posit is also incomplete. Maybe we should give the free market a try.
I understand coastal real estate can be had for a song in Somalia.
ReplyDeleteDoubtless bargains abound in Bangladesh too, and I understand the Penguins in Antarctica welcome colonization with open wings.
Everything on Baffin Island is up for grabs -- dirt cheap tundra. Yurts may be imported from Siberia. Sanitation facilities are still primitive.
From what I've seen the real estate available in Australia is architecturally undistinguished and much too expensive for what it is.
Well. Silverfiddle, when for profit takes nearly 20% of the top for administrative costs and Medicare is at 5% I say that 5 is less than 20. Works the same in whatever number system you use, binary, octal, hex ... Medicare is more efficient.
ReplyDeleteMy, my, a couple hundred words in Investors Business Daily and you've settled the matter of Chavez. Was that meant as a joke?
Pick up this weeks Nation and read the featured article. Get some in depth knowledge. I'm sorry that online it's a subscriber only article.
Yeah, but two hundred words in a IBD opinion column and it's settled. Please stop.
"Well. Silverfiddle, when for profit takes nearly 20% of the top for administrative costs and Medicare is at 5% I say that 5 is less than 20"
ReplyDeleteBut Ducky, the Obamacare bureaucracy is still in its infancy. The government workers that will be performing the functions of those minimum wage clerks are not volunteers and will soon be GS-11's, 12's, and 13's, not to mention the WG's who will soon be reaping coin with the AFGE.
Yeah, government is more efficient than the private sector (ROFLMAO).
Cheers!
I said Medicare. Don't straw man.
ReplyDeleteNow where do you get the specs for the so called "Obamacare bureaucracy" and are they paid more than private insurer management or are you blowing smoke out of your ass again?
Large-scale government social-insurance programs are the best way we have found to achieve major and important public purposes.
ReplyDeleteIn health care, despite extraordinary administrative inefficiencies and little ability to improve quality and cost-effectiveness, the private insurance marketplace works—unless you are old, sick (and happen to be out of a job), or poor. Yet it is the old, the sick, and the poor who need health insurance most—hence, Medicare and Medicaid.
Pick up the nation? You're serious?
ReplyDeleteGo study economic data on Venezuela, and read the regional papers.
The poor are poored and crime is worse under the Chavez Boligarqia.
One gang of criminals replaced another, but at least the old gang kept the petroleum infrastructure up to date.
Medicare enjoys an apparent cost advantage because it has not competition and much of its cost is hidden in the federal government, so your comparison is false.
What is that you always snidely say?
Pitch till you win, Beantown Quacker.
I guess the Beantown Bolshevik hasn't been reading the news:
ReplyDeleteCNN: Obama Care Costs Continue to Skyrocket
Obamacare is a nuclear stinkbomb on steroids. But what could we expect from dictatorial progressives who are ignorant of basic economics and human nature?
Education and health, two markets suffering the greatest government penetration, also suffer skyrocketing inflation.
Typical leftist stink-bomb throwing from Canardo. Either these people really do live in a parallel universe, or, they are bald-faced liars who disseminate falsehood with incredible persistence and fanatical zeal.
ReplyDeleteAnd they say that Marxism is not a "religion!"
HAH!
Yeah, FT. You'll have to go a long way to find a truer true believer than Ducky.
ReplyDelete@ FreeThinke: I live in a beautiful, well-appointed 4,500-square-foot home. I admit I am very fortunate, but for what I've paid to live here I am I could not afford to purchase anything much bigger than a glorified broom closet on the fourth floor of a walkup in any of the more desirable cities in England and the continent.
I can verify this, and everything he said after it. I have lived, not just vacationed, in many other countries, and his description of living in Europe is dead on.
I get the feeling that liberals in this country who wax rhapsodic over European living have never done it for any length of time. Utilities cost and gasoline alone are outrageous.
And Duckster, you mention Australia, and good for you. They are #3 on Heritage's Index of Economic Freedom
Only Singapore and Hong Kong beat them out, but who wants to live under a communist regime where smog or free speech can kill you, or where you get your ass caned for chewing gum in public.
So Australia is the gold standard. Unlike our creaking, bloated behemoth that eats everything everything in its path and leave nothing but giant clods of shit in its wake, their government is efficient and people are happy with it. Their social services actually work.
If you whiny progressives who worship at the altar of Big Mommy and Big Daddy Government would actually study Australia, and deliver government efficiently like they do, the argument would be over. In your favor.
But sneering and screaming about how horrible those nasty wepubwicans are is so much more rewarding.
To clarify my earlier remark, if the cost of living is higher in Europe is higher than America, might that be partly explained by the fact that over 3 times as many people occupy roughly the same land area over here? Particularly so in England, where over 1000 people share each square mile. I'd guess this is more significant than whatever difference their might be in our economics or politics.
ReplyDeleteJez,
ReplyDeleteProgressives in this country argue just the opposite:
That if we would all pack ourselves into crowded city centers, everything would be cheaper.
I am not making you responsible for their arguments, just pointing that out.
The trouble with our wide open spaces, Jez, is that given the choice few-if-any would live there. They've long been regarded as places bright, ambitious young people flee in droves.
ReplyDeleteAmerica is really two -- maybe three -- countries united primarily by the the temporary Emperor in the White House, the Imperial Supreme Court, and the Washington Bureaucrazy.
It's much cheaper to live in the "provinces" and prohibitively expensive to live well in places like New York and San Francisco, but ...
In this land people are still permitted to exercise freedom of choice, even if the decisions they make are often unwise. How much longer that freedom may continue to exists depends solely on how successful we may be in defeating the Marxicrats, the Interventionists and the Pseudo-Egalitarians who currently infest the land like a plague of locusts.
"The Washington Bureaucrazy!"
ReplyDeleteSometimes you're just too funny, FT. You got a belly laugh out of me when I saw that, and believe me it happens rarely these days.
----------> Katharine Heartburn
Do the verbal wars to nowhere ever grow tiring? It is no wonder why our problems continue to grow.
ReplyDeleteWith no end in sight I'm wondering what our progeny will say about us.
Your cities mostly have room to sprawl. The exceptions such as sf and ny which are constrained by geography are, surprise surprise, as expensive as Paris (guess).
ReplyDeleteJez: San Fran, NY and other liberal enclaves such as Boulder, Colorado are constrained by rent control and land use that restricts new development while squeezing out the working middle class the tony progressive oligarchs profess to care so much about.
ReplyDelete"Yes, you may clean my toilets, but you may not live here..."
Shaw Kenawes real name is Soledad O'brien.
ReplyDeleteOld liberals are really pathetic. That is all.
ReplyDeleteAndie
I hope you had a lovely Easter, my friend!