Coming from a poor family myself, I would never disrespect or look down upon others who are poor. The people I despise are those that expect the society to pay for their way and do not put in the slightest effort to become self-sufficient. I went through city public school; I have not met one poor person who put in the effort but not make good grades and go on to graduate from college with help from various funds. They practically get a free ride on college expenses. Conversely it is the middle class that get screwed because they do not qualify for such funds. Too often the case these so called

 

[QUOTE=PsychoBen,Jun 29 2006, 03:00 PM] Coming from a poor family myself, I would never disrespect or look down upon others who are poor. The people I despise are those that expect the society to pay for their way and do not put in the slightest effort to become self-sufficient. I went through city public school; I have not met one poor person who put in the effort but not make good grades and go on to graduate from college with help from various funds. They practically get a free ride on college expenses. Conversely it is the middle class that get screwed because they do not qualify for such funds. Too often the case these so called

 

Its the other way around. Transfer payments (welfare) account for nearly half of all federal spending. This does not even include state and local spending or federal grants to states and municipalities that end up being used for welfare (15% of federal spending). Less than 18% of federal expenditures go to the military. Please do a little research before stating something as a fact. Otherwise you will appear foolish when you pull "facts" out of thin air. Here is the reference for the figures I provided you.

Hyman, D. (2005). Public finance: a contemporary application of theory to policy. 8th ed. Mason, OH: South-Western.

It is fortunate that as you stated, you do not have the knowledge and ability to put your grand ideas into practice. The policies you advocate are poor. You make things up and you are wrong. I have nothing against you personally, but you are stating your beliefs about social economics as fact when you do not know what you are talking about.

 

there's NO WAY in hell that welfare accounts for nearly half of all federal spending. that is absolutely ridiculous. a simple wikipedia search says this:

As of September 2004 the U.S. Congressional Budget Office reported that federal government spending for 2004 was projected to be $2,293 billion, or slightly less than 20% of the GDP. Of that, $159 billion was for net interest, $486 billion for defense, $492 billion for Social Security, $473 billion for Medicare and Medicaid, $191 billion for various welfare programs, $136 billion for "retirement and disability" benefits, and $64 billion was projected to be spent elsewhere.

Wikipedia: search results for "Government Spending"

More in depth search brings up Bush's 2006 budget... PDF files with break down of spending for each dept. No surprise, Dept. of Defense is the largest file. $419.3 billion is projected military spending. Health & Human Services is $67.2 billion, Housing/Urban Development (Scot's Section 8 buddies) is $28.5 billion and just for good measure we'll throw in Dept. of Labor, which isn't even really welfare, but they handle unemployment, they're $11.5 billion. But all 3 of them combined ($107.2 billion) is NOTHING compared to our whopping $419.3 billion dollar military budget.

See for yourself....

who the hell is D. Hyman?

 

P.S.: transfer payments don't necessarily mean welfare.

transfer payments: Money given by the government to its citizens. Examples include Social Security, unemployment compensation, welfare, and disability payments.

of course social security is a huge part of what our gov't pays out. esp. now that all the baby boomers are going into retirement. do your research more thoroughly...

 

You left out medicare and medicaid above when you highlighted welfare. Medicaid is welfare for healthcare. No reason to leave that out if you're talking about welfare.

 

x 100% Thank you, I was going to include some more info but you've pretty much covered it. This expense represents the #1 expense in our 2006 budgets.

 

David Hyman Ph.D. is an economics professor at NC State University and author of several college textbooks. And yes, I also think it is ridiculus that social welfare accounts for half of federal spending but it does. Just add up the numbers that you posted from wikipedia.
The reason that you don't see it in the 2006 budget pdf is because you do not know how to read a budget. Most of the social welfare programs are administered by state and local governments using federal funds. Therefore, you will not see an appropriation to a federal agency such as HUD. It goes to the states for administration by state/local agencies. OASDI is the biggest exception.
Again, I have read many of your posts and think you are a nice person. You are just claiming facts that are simply not true and it is casting you in a bad light.

 

I am not the one that most needs to do research on this subject but I will continue to do so because it is part of my job. Anyways, since you don't like Hyman, I will use Stiglitz as a source. Stiglitz wrote that transfer payments are "payments that transfer money from one individual to another - but not in return for the provision of goods or services." Did you catch that? From one individual to another. Its not government money, its taxpayer money. I do not know why you think that disability payments, social security, and unemployment checks do not constitute social welfare spending. It is money taken from someone who supposedly has more ability to pay and given to someone with supposedly less ability to pay. That is the principle of welfare. It does not matter if the recipient is old, disabled, unemployed, or a single parent with too many kids, its all social welfare spending.

Oh, and who is Stiglitz? He was an economic advisor to President Clinton. You should like him. Although Hyman is no right winger either.
By the way, neither am I. The thing is, if you want to achieve social change, then you are going to have to get your facts straight so that people will take you seriously. The two books I cited were written by liberal authors. You can argue for or against more social spending. I don't have a problem with that, but you cannot misrepresent what it is or how much has been spent on it.

Stiglitz, J. (2000). Economics of the public sector. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton.

 

[QUOTE=kadeshpa,Jun 29 2006, 08:22 AM]Welfare only exacerbates the problems of the poor.