Our Trillion-Dollar War
Perhaps it is time to stop worrying about an exit strategy for the War in Iraq and formulate one for the War on Poverty.
No, it’s not the War in Iraq — it’s the War on Poverty. Incredible as it may seem, Americans transfer more than a trillion dollars each year to low-income families through a bewildering variety of programs, all in the name of fighting poverty and inequality. That’s about seven times the cost of the Iraq war.
How do we spend so much? In 2005, $620 billion was spent on more than eighty welfare programs funded by federal, state, and local governments. But low-income persons receive benefits from other government programs that are not designated as welfare programs. Most notably, they receive benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and the public school system.
I estimate that Social Security benefits for those in the poorest fifth of the population totaled $100 billion in 2005. Medicare provided another $115 billion, and educating the children of low-income families cost $105 billion more. (These figures do not measure total spending on these programs but only the expenditures benefiting those in the lowest fifth of the income distribution.) To these sums we may add $40 billion in uncompensated medical care and $78 billion in private charity.
Grand total: $1.058 trillion in 2005. It would be larger today.
To put a trillion dollars in perspective, it’s more than twice our total spending on national defense.
Source:
Our Trillion-Dollar War
intellectualconservative.com
One Comment on “Our Trillion-Dollar War”
Leave a Comment
Hot off the blog!
"As the National Journal's Ron Brownstein has been reporting, white America is increasingly alienated and distrustful of all our major economic and political power centers - the banks, big corporations, the government. And, for the first time in our lifetimes outside the South, white racial consciousness has visibly begun to rise."
~ Patrick J. Buchanan
Obama team's panic over losing whites by Patrick J. Buchanan
[...] One trillion dollars per year to feed, clothe, entertain, and hospitalize strangers. At least. As Robert Frost (who was named after Robert E. Lee) said, “The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.” [...]