Triumph of the redistributioni st left

[SteveA]

I couldn't help posting this because it's a Christian Science Monitor article. Obviously they feel let down by Republicans but I found the very first sentence interesting:

"Even with Republicans in control, trends are decidedly in favor of massive redistribution of wealth."

If one were to really assume an entirely neutral position, you'd pretty much have to conclude that is was because Republicans gained control that we had all this spending. I have no idea whether or not a Democratic sweep would have been better or worse, but it seems obvious there's no lack of corruption in politics today.

Anyway, here's the article:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0123/p25s01-cogn.html

"The political left in America is emerging victorious.
No, this isn't about the damage that Jack Abramoff's mischief has done to the political right. Nor is it about President Bush's lousy poll numbers. And it doesn't refer to Democrats' recent win of two governorships.

It's about something much deeper; namely, that the era of big government is far from over. Trends are decidedly in favor of that quintessential leftist goal: massive redistribution of wealth.

Republicans' capture of both Congress and the White House was, understandably, a demoralizing blow to the left. But the latter can take solace that "Republican" is no longer synonymous with spending restraint, free markets, and other ideals of the political right.

While the left did not get its way on tax cuts, this may be only a temporary defeat: Freewheeling spending has made future tax cuts politically a lot harder.

During the first five years of President Bush's presidency, nondefense discretionary spending (i.e., spending decided on an annual basis) rose 27.9 percent, far more than the 1.9 percent growth during President Clinton's first five years, according to the libertarian Reason Foundation. And according to Citizens Against Government Waste, the number of congressional "pork barrel" projects under Republican leadership during fiscal 2005 was 13,997, more than 10 times that of 1994.

Discretionary spending is dwarfed by mandatory spending - spending that cannot be changed without changing the laws. Shifting demographics combined with an inability to change those laws virtually ensures that, through programs such as Social Security and Medicare, America's workers will be forced to redistribute a larger and larger portion of their income to other Americans in the coming decades.

The near impossibility of changing the system was evident in the recent effort to convert Social Security from a spending program to a savings program. It hardly stood a chance against the powerful senior citizens' lobby and other left-leaning groups, and their allies in Congress on both sides of the political aisle.

..."

[Zeebadee]

Quote by: SteveA The near impossibility of changing the system was evident in the recent effort to convert Social Security from a spending program to a savings program. It hardly stood a chance against the powerful senior citizens' lobby and other left-leaning groups, and their allies in Congress on both sides of the political aisle. ..."

I'm not sure I buy the claim that the senior citizens' lobby is a left-leaning group. I am approaching that age myself, and all I want is my money back, as was promised. The politicians forced me to contribute to this massive Ponzi scheme, they taxed my money going into it, and they tax it again when they grudgingly give it back. They don't want to change it from a "spending program to a savings program", it's already both at the same time. I contribute to a savings program, and they spend it to buy themselves votes.

[SteveA]

Quote by: Zeebadee I'm not sure I buy the claim that the senior citizens' lobby is a left-leaning group. I am approaching that age myself, and all I want is my money back, as was promised. The politicians forced me to contribute to this massive Ponzi scheme, they taxed my money going into it, and they tax it again when they grudgingly give it back. They don't want to change it from a "spending program to a savings program", it's already both at the same time. I contribute to a savings program, and they spend it to buy themselves votes.

I agree that though we should convert SS into a savings program (assuming we didn't just get rid of it, which would be even better IMO ... how many people save anymore?), they still owe people who paid into the system. To me it's a lie when they say "Oops, we spent the money! Sorry can't pay anyone". Since when did that ever stop them? They found $1.2 trillion for the drug program so far ... divided by maybe 30 million elderly, that would be about $40,000 each ignoring that not every elderly person needed a ton of drugs either. I seriously don't even know where all this money is being channeled ... overseas?

[PatrickHenry]

Quote by: SteveA I seriously don't even know where all this money is being channeled ... overseas?

You ever hear of the pharmaceutical industry?

[SteveA]

Quote by: PatrickHenry You ever hear of the pharmaceutical industry?

But seriously, it's too much money unless it's just give aways or there's some massive research effort.

Let's say 15% of the population would fall under this elderly category.
Then assume 40% of them had some relatively special or expensive drug prescriptions (to me that seems high but we've got a society that seems to pop pills for everything now)
Then let's say that only half of those people really needed assistance affording this.

So 300 million * 15% * 40% * 50% = 9 million people (so this is just a rough guess of how many might really benefit from this program)

So we take $1,200,000,000,000 (I want to show all the zeroes) and divide it by 9 million people to get $133,000 per person!!! That's ridiculous. How many people can even save that much cash and yet we spend that (supposedly) on medication for someone. I don't mean to sound cruel but if this is for elderly people then how much time are they going to have to benefit from these anyway? (I tend to be skeptical of the benefits of a lot of medications. I've seen people who take maybe 8 pills a day for different things, and though I can't truly say it's unnecessary it just seems a disturbing trend) We hear politicians talk about feeding starving children or something but then when it comes time to actually spending the money they hand it their pharmaceutical buddies who probably pocket most the money anyway. How often do they stop an consider how this drain is going to affect others ... who are going to have to live a lot longer probably. Again, I'm not trying to be callous but it seems a real concern.

Lets assume basic grains cost $1/pound in bulk. If it would take 200 pounds of these to feed someone for a year, then that could be $200/year to feed someone who literally had no food (I think that's a reasonable estimate for costs). Ok so let's take $1,200,000,000,000 and divide it by $200.

So we could probably hand 6,000,000,000 people each 200 pounds of basic foodstuffs and feed half the world for the cost of simply the money blown on "Bush's buddies" (that's how I see it).

Of course I don't want to misrepresent this. Government wouldn't truly be growing any of this food but using the same value of resources it diverts into this drug scam we could probably feed every starving person in the world for half a decade. I'm not a big charity proponent but if we're going to do something in the name of compassion, then it should be serious. Scamming everyone isn't compassion. I truly think this money, and other resources, are being pumping into things people would have serious problems with, if they knew. Call me paranoid but that's truly what I think's going on and even if Bush was out of office, it wouldn't stop.

[PatrickHenry]

So 300 million * 15% * 40% * 50% = 9 million people (so this is just a rough guess of how many might really benefit from this program)

This kind of math is pure speculation. It won't do. And the $1.2 trillion is from the article, but I'd like to see THEIR source.

Still overall, I agree with your thesis that the redistribution alleged to aid the elderly and impoverished ends up in the pockets of the wealthy and privileged. And it is extracted from the hide of the workers. When will they revolt?

[Zeebadee]

Not only have the politicians spent all the Social Security money (replacing it with IOU's), but they've spent every dollar of every other tax inposed on us. In addition they've borrowed something on the order of $400 billion this year and spent it too. The national debt is well over $8,000,000,000,000.

"The estimated population of the United States is 298,365,492
so each citizen's share of this debt is $27,457.75" http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

[SteveA]

I have a solution for the national debt. They owe money so the simple solution is to just pay people back. Write every man, woman and child a check for $27,000, apologize, close down the Federal Reserve and stop making more IOUs.