Our Welfare Dilemma
I believe most Americans want to help people who have hit a bump in the road of life and need a hand up. The question for all of us is when is enough an enough?
A recently released report this year by the Congressional Budget Office has found that only the top 2 out of 5 income quintiles pay more in taxes than they received in “government transfers”.
In the lowest quintile, those households who pay on average only $400 in federal taxes (as of 2014, the most recent data available) received more than $16,000 in various types of tax-funded transfer payments.
In the second lowest quintile, those households who pay on average $3,800 in federal taxes received more than $17,700 in various types of tax-funded transfer payments.
In the third or middle quintile, those households who pay on average $9,600 in federal taxes received more than $15,400 in various types of tax-funded transfer payments.
The end result of these tax-funded transfer payments is households in the bottom three quintiles have higher incomes after taxes and transfers than they do before taxes and transfers.
As I stated above, I am and I know most Americans are for helping people out during a rough time in their lives but at what point do we have to say enough is enough.
How much longer can our society, as we know it, continue to lean on a minority in this country to finance the rest of their lives. I do not say this out of contempt or anger at these people I say it out of concern for our future generations. This current oldest generation is for the first time in our history leaving to future generations a society that is worse off than they received. That is not something to be proud of, in fact it should be something to be embarrassed about.
At some point we as a country must decide if we want to become a welfare state like most of Western Europe, and look how well they do I.e. Greece, or if we still want to be a leader in this world, a welfare state cannot be a leader in my estimation.
Also what we will do when the interest on our federal debt eats up more and more of our budget. The debt death spiral will end up destroying our way of life in the end.
If there are not enough funds to pay for what our government must do for us such as defense, infrastructure and policing how will we be able to afford all these programs that our government is not constitutionally supposed to do.