Actually, Romney Needs to Talk More About Our Fiscally and Morally Disastrous Entitlement Society
The "47 percent" may not be the best way to frame the issue of our growing Entitlement Society, but Romney and Ryan are nuts if this latest kerfuffle stops them from talking about this (numbers courtesy of AEI’s Nick Eberstadt):
1. In 1960, U.S. government transfers to individuals totaled about $24 billion in current dollars, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By 2010 that total was almost 100 times as large.
2. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown 727% over the past half-century, rising at an average rate of about 4% a year.
3. In 2010 alone, government at all levels oversaw a transfer of over $2.2 trillion in money, goods and services. The burden of these entitlements came to slightly more than $7,200 for every person in America. Scaled against a notional family of four, the average entitlements burden for that year alone approached $29,0004. In 1960, entitlement payments accounted for well under a third of the federal government’s total outlays—about the same fraction as in 1940, when the Great Depression was still shaping American life. But over subsequent decades, entitlements as a percentage of total federal spending soared. By 2010 they accounted for just about two-thirds of all federal spending, with all other responsibilities of the federal government making up barely one-third.
5. Poverty- or income-related entitlements—transfers of money, goods or services, including health-care services—accounted for over $650 billion in government outlays in 2010. Between 1960 and 2010, inflation-adjusted transfers for these objectives increased by over 30-fold, or by over 7% a year.
6. For their part, entitlements for older Americans—Medicare, Social Security and other pension payments—worked out to even more by 2010, about $1.2 trillion. In real terms, these transfers multiplied by a factor of about 12 over that period—or an average growth of more than 5% a year.
7. But in purely arithmetic terms, the most astonishing growth of entitlements has been for health-care guarantees based on claims of age (Medicare) or income (Medicaid). Until the mid-1960s, no such entitlements existed; by 2010, these two programs were absorbing more than $900 billion annually.
Overcoming America’s historic cultural resistance to government entitlements has been a long and formidable endeavor. But as we know today, this resistance did not ultimately prove an insurmountable obstacle to establishing mass public entitlements and normalizing the entitlement lifestyle. The U.S. is now on the verge of a symbolic threshold: the point at which more than half of all American households receive and accept transfer benefits from the government. From cradle to grave, a treasure chest of government-supplied benefits is there for the taking for every American citizen—and exercising one’s legal rights to these many blandishments is now part of the American way of life.
And how to pay for this expanded and expanding Welfare State going forward? Massive tax increases? On everybody? And how will this affect American as an Innovation State? What about our national character? As Eberstadt concludes: “The taker mentality has thus ineluctably gravitated toward taking from a pool of citizens who can offer no resistance to such schemes: the unborn descendants of today’s entitlement-seeking population.”
Keep talking, Mitt.
- Comment (9)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (6)
Comments:
Mar '11
Re: Actually, Romney Needs to Talk More About Our Fiscally and Morally Disastrous Entitlement Society
James: I completely agree here, and its why I think that this particular latest story is actively counter-productive to Romney.
Ryan has been talking about this on the trail for a while--and he makes an outstanding case for the difference between the maker/taker society and the choice that stands before voters as far as free society/social democracy.
Romney's ham-fisted remark comes off as too dismissive, and conflates too many things, to be helpful. He's got to own it now that he's said it, but he can and should turn the story to his advantage by hammering home some of the points cited above--by holding onto the core of his charge against the Obama agenda and the bloating growth of the welfare state, while quietly dropping the conflated portions of his previous statement.
There is no reason to think that this debate cannot be won, if it is conducted skillfully.
Dec '10
Re: Actually, Romney Needs to Talk More About Our Fiscally and Morally Disastrous Entitlement Society
So basically he's backed into a debate we need to have as a nation. Works for me.
Re: Actually, Romney Needs to Talk More About Our Fiscally and Morally Disastrous Entitlement Society
We need to win this debate if we don't want to spend the next four years reading about America's "brain drain," as the entrepreneurially-minded begin emigrating to greener pastures.
Nov '10
Re: Actually, Romney Needs to Talk More About Our Fiscally and Morally Disastrous Entitlement Society
There's a link that the Republicans need to make, however, and they are not making it. Right now it sounds as though they're saying: We the righteous make our own way. You the morally deficient do not. The missing link is to say that our policies will make it possible for more people to make their own way in the world. And if you are disabled or otherwise unable to make your own way yourself, you need to get on board so your children and grandchildren can hope to make their own way and prosper, because you want a life for them that's better than the life you are able to make for yourself.
Feb '12
Re: Actually, Romney Needs to Talk More About Our Fiscally and Morally Disastrous Entitlement Society
I agree.
Dec '10
Re: Actually, Romney Needs to Talk More About Our Fiscally and Morally Disastrous Entitlement Society
This is the moral case Arthur Brooks writes about. Also missing is from Romney (so far) is the real cause/effect of the situation. It's not Americans that are broken, it's the government. The people need to be offended that the left thinks half the nation incapable or too stupid to make their own way. They also should be offended by the cynicism of deliberately getting people hooked on entitlements to farm votes. They act like crack dealers and should be treated as such.
Re: Actually, Romney Needs to Talk More About Our Fiscally and Morally Disastrous Entitlement Society
Spot-on. The entitlement battle -- and I say that beyond just Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- scares the Democrats out of their minds...and it's one we should welcome.
Aug '11
Re: Actually, Romney Needs to Talk More About Our Fiscally and Morally Disastrous Entitlement Society
Agreed, this discussion needs to be had before what little bit of moral sensibility is left in the average American is completely gone.
May '10
Re: Actually, Romney Needs to Talk More About Our Fiscally and Morally Disastrous Entitlement Society
Obviously the debate needs to take place, but the question is how best to frame it and push it forward. I have not been back in the states during this cycle and am probably completely out of touch. I would have thought that having the most credible entitlement speaker in the USA, Paul Ryan, hammer at it - while Romney goes after everything else would be a reasonably effective strategy for this stage of the campaign. Given that Romney can not open his mouth without the media jumping down his throat and that Ryan's image is as impervious to attack as is practicable - from the other side of the world, the strategy looks reasonable.