The NYT has some great stuff up today about how Americans are dependent on government.
1. "Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It"
2. Interactive map
3. Graphs
The article, maps, and graphs focus on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Income Support, Unemployment Insurance, and Vet Benefits. What the article misses (and I know this was not their objective) is all of the other ways that people are indirectly dependent on government resources--primarily in the various forms of corporate welfare that permeate government distribution (farm subsidies, oil subsidies, highway subsidies, bank bailouts, etc.).
I point this out for two reasons. First, if we managed to add these indirect government benefits to the map I suspect we would find that the map flattens out--that is, the areas where individuals are not terribly reliant on direct government benefits may also be the areas where companies (and by extension, their employees) are benefiting from government support. Second, one of the things not being talked about in the Republican small government conversation is the vast network of indirect government benefits that permeate American economic life. While small government advocates do bring up the bank bailouts, you rarely hear them talking about all the other ways that people are indirectly dependent on government. Talk to anybody on Capitol Hill about making major reforms to the farm subsidy system and you will quickly realize what the real third-rail of American politics is. This is, of course, on purpose. Many small-government advocates rely heavily on these benefits and would regret them becoming a serious component of the small government conversation.
This is not say that corporate welfare is necessarily bad. My own thought is that corporate welfare ought to be the subject of the same sort of scrutiny that individual government benefits are subject to. Anybody out there that does not think that Medicare requires serious reform (in order to just stay solvent, let alone become a "better" program) is not looking at the facts. The same can be said of energy subsidies and bank subsidies. We need government to incentivize clean fuel productions and to make sure that when banks screw up--even when their actions have been terribly (even, potentially, criminally) misguided--the whole economic system does not collapse. I just wish we were having an honest conversation about it.
from the NYT
Thursday, April 19, 2012 at 8:51AM 