Meanwhile, I'm paying the taxes, bringing up the family, and driving the ten-year-old minivan that can be heard a tenth of a mile down the street with all its squeaking. There'll be no gravy train when I retire in approx. twenty-three years.
Most of what the gubmit spends is, in fact, on the elderly. And these programs are on autopilot. Only the military spending varies. Here are the facts, as presented by Dr. Walter Williams:
Federal tax receipts for 2009 totaled $2.1 trillion. The largest
items in the federal budget were Social Security ($710 billion),
national defense ($689 billion), Medicare ($456 billion) and Medicaid
($327 billion). The primary recipients of federal spending are seniors.
Some of the letters argued that it's unfair to characterize what seniors
are getting as handouts because they worked all their lives and paid
into Social Security and Medicare.
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Jagadeesh Gokhale, senior
economic adviser, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland; and Laurence J.
Kotlikoff, professor of Economics at Boston University document the
looming Social Security and Medicare crises in "Is War Between
Generations Inevitable?". They report that "A male reaching 65 years of
age today (in 2000, the year of their study) can expect to receive
$71,000 more in government 'transfer' benefits (of all kinds at both the
federal and state levels, but mainly from Social Security and Medicare)
than he will pay in taxes (of all kinds at both the federal and state
levels) before he dies. A 65-year-old female can expect a net gain of
more than twice that amount; she can expect $163,000 more in benefits
than she will pay in taxes."
But the cowardly
Republicans are too scared to take a principled stand; and the dangerous
Democrats are too deceitful and are now taking out the tried-and-true
playbook of scaring Seniors.]]>
