This book covers an array of important issues from taxes to social security to poverty programs. From part of a piece that I had at Fox News this week where I discuss just a small portion of his book:
A new book, "Stealing from Each Other, How the Welfare State Robs Americans of Money and Spirit" by Edgar Browning, an economics professor at Texas A&M University and a world-renowned expert on government finance, has added up the costs and consequences of the existing programs.
By 2005, the Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives pointed out 85 separate programs that primarily aided persons with limited incomes. Total federal, state, and local expenditures amounted to $620 billion. That came to $16,750 per person in poverty, or over $50,000 for a welfare family of three, several times higher than the official poverty line for a family of three, which was $15,577 in 2005.
Browning estimates that only 10 percent of these expenditures went to administrative costs. He provides some perspective: "We are already spending more than enough to completely eliminate poverty, even if the poor have zero earnings or other sources of income on their own." The official government estimates of the number of poor people rarely count the government aid when calculating the poor's income. Browning also notes that there are so many programs and some are so complicated, "no one understands fully how the welfare system operates."
Yet even these numbers underestimate how much help the government spends on the poor. For example, Social Security does not provide benefits that are proportional to what people pay into the system. The system provides large transfers from high-income to low-income individuals. Browning estimates the welfare portion of Social Security accounts for $100 billion a year. According to him, adding this to Medicare, other uncompensated medical care, and other costs increases welfare payments to over $1 trillion in 2005.
By comparison, Browning has noted elsewhere that the first five years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars cost $473 billion, less than half what the war on poverty spent in one year.
Review By John R. Lott Jr.
Другой рецензент этой же книги обращает внимание читателей на ее заключительные разделы, где приводятся цифры суммарного эффекта наносимого стране левыми изгаляниями над "системой поддержки бедных", которые начались в эпоху Линдона Джонсона по инициированной им программе "Великое Общество" и были затем развиты до нынещних их "всесокрушающих" в стране форм Картером и Клинтоном.
Соответственное же и статья где обсуждаются эти цифры носит вполне откровенное название - "A Nation of Thieves":
The disincentive effects of Social Security have reduced the GDP by 10 percent, the federal income tax (as opposed to a proportional tax) by 9 percent and past deficits by 3.5 percent for a total of 22.5 percent. He guesses that welfare programs have reduced GDP by 2.5 percent.
The overall effect of redistributionist policies has created incentives that have reduced GDP by a total of 25 percent. Without those, our GDP would be close to $18 trillion instead of $14 trillion.
Review by Walter E. Williams. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
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Ссылка по теме: Граница между социальной справедливостью и "левыми" её извращениями