click image for interactive mapThe government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.
The ultra-right rails against subsidizing the poor and diminishing their “work ethic”. In fact every social program subsidizes corrupt capital. As DAvid Cay Johnston showed, the median wage in America is absolutely static 1973-2003. The cost of living is not. To support a stabilizing force of middle class existence and keep dire poverty from occurring, we have subsidized working people as well as the unemployed to allow corporations to escape paying decently. The Wal-Mart Medicaid subsidy is a case in point. Europe does the same with its extensive benefits that free capital in those countries. Difference is – corporations and the wealthy who benefit in profits pay taxes for this support. U.S. corporations appear to believe we will continue as a stable democracy even as we morph into their desired Third World status of no support for those not rich. They don’t want to pay anything – not living wages, not taxes for social supports. But one has only to look at the upheavals in non-supportive nations to know that the rich in this nation flourish largely through government subsidy, not just to put money in their pocket but to preserve the stability of the society around them. Undoing social supports? Well, US corporations – beware of your wishes.
@Churchlady320 The GOP/Republicans want corporate socialism, but not an egalitarian society for people in human form (i.e., not “corporate persons). Tea Party Republican Racist Twits want to keep their “government handouts” but want to keep governmental benefits from scary black, brown, and lgbt folk. The GOP/Republicans are holding this country hostage — terrorism in its truest form.
Churchlady320
They HAVE corporate socialism, my point. Behind this, behind even the racism, lies Dominionist versions of their religion that believes there is “An Elect”, corporate leaders who’ve given at least lip service to Jesus, and therefore are our “true leaders”. All of us, even working class or poor Born Again End Times believers, are to bow to them in submission. If we were REALLY good Dominionists, we’d be rich. If you’re poor – it’s YOUR fault. Remember even Herman Cain buys this disgusting view of The Elect. Of course no one who is NOT one of them can ever be an equal which includes anyone with a modicum of self respect and who is “different” – people of color, women, LGBT people, immigrants, non-Dominionist, and on and on and on. The pursuit of embedded inequality, of a Constitution that upholds rights for ONLY those people – this is one of scariest things that has happened to America in a nation of often very scary things.
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