Thursday 15 December 2024 10:35:19 PM CDT
The best time to do something about the welfare state was about five or six decades ago. The Great Society is generaly regarded as the beginning
and as a political tool it certainly was. LBJ's well-documented and
infamous comment about turning an underclass into a party
constituency became SOP for the Democrat party. He was off by a few decades though - only six or so decades (not 200 years as he boasted) black
Americans are beginning to reject the party that for so long treated them as animals trained to beg for food. It has been slow but Democrats have been
losing Hispanic votes for a long time and alienated many Jews this time around. The importation of third-worlders has angered many black Americans as
their urban communities have been invaded.
The welfare state problem isn't racial. It is true that statistically more black people are welfare beneficiaries but the solution isn't in any way
related to race. Unless the government is willing to embrace a relistic and just solution to the debt problem one of the necessities will be to
cut 'social spending'. What gets cut? Social Security and Medicare for millions of elderly and largely infirm people or millions of young nominally
healthy [1] and certainly energetic parasites reacting to having their food supply interrupted? As always the politicians will do whatever is necessary
to prevent the urban population centers from erupting. That will only be a temporary fix because by then it will be too late and eventually the whole
thing falls apart.
I'm sixty-nine years old and have been collecting a meager SS check since I was sixty-seven. $2800 a month and I'm one of the better off ones. I'm still paying into it
at about 30% of everything I earn. Fortunately I can leave most of it in the company and I own it but if it is paid to me as income I lose a third of it. Meanwhile people
who in many cases never worked a day in their lives and never will are being paid more than my relatively large social security. And I pay another $250 or so a month for
an insurance policy that covers me for stuff Medicare won't. I fucking paid for all of what I'm gettting not and more and I'm still paying for it. I have zero sympathy
for a single mother who 'wants to buy her kid a treat' now and then and thinks I should pay for it.
Politicians - OK Republican politicians - are so terrified of the Social Security third rail that they won't even try to present a realistic solution. To be sure the Democrats
would oppose anything that would fix the problem but they don't even try. If in fact the DOGE folks actually get some action going reforms can be snuck in amongst the other
stuff.
The Social Security problem can be fixed if the theft is stopped first. Stop that and then raise the tax and the income limit slightly, enough to push out the default date and plan a
phaseout. Same with Medicare. It may be that the next administration can present this in a coherent way that assures all current and near future recipients that their benefits will not
be cut.
The welfare problem is another matter. Fixing Social Security will ease it somewhat but must eventually be dealt with.
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