But in the USA and other socially liberal (with regards to welfare) countries, we are killing ourselves with social programs at the expense of those who are productive. This is only sustainable for a certain amount of time- that is, until taxation is heavy enough that the working can no longer afford to pay the bill. We are nearing that point right now.
How do you reconcile such claims with the simple facts that federal tax burdens are at 60-year lows and there is no such thing as a "social program" that costs half as much as military pay and retirement? Why aren't you whining about how we can't afford to pay the bill for all these frilly benefits to all these soldier-boys?
We have a population in which almost half is not paying anything in the way of federal income taxes, which is the largest chunk of tax monies that we bring into the federal revenues.
There are two problems here. First, the half you are talking about doesn't have enough income to pay any federal income taxes anymore, and second, the half you aren't talking about has plenty of income alright, but still doesn't pay enough federal income taxes. Bush sent them all off on a tax holiday, and now they don't want to come back.
We are aging, a higher percent of people are moving onto SS and Medicare, a huge number of people are moving into federally funded disability programs, where they will remain until they die, and now we are looking at a huge federal expenditure on health care that we can't afford.
The huge expenditure on health care that we couldn't have afforded was the one looming in the event that we DIDN'T enact HCR. PPACA will not be a cure-all by any means, but it is a major step in the right driection. SS is meanwhile perfectly well funded for decades even if we do nothing at all to reinforce it. Medicare will start receiving a cash infusion from the 3.8% surtax on unearned income that goes into effect in 2013. That puts it on solid ground through the mid-2020's at least, but it will need further work. It's principal problem of course is the ass-backward for-profit, fee-for-service, private-sector health care system that it is plugged into.
When the government keeps taxing those who work, to pay for an ever-expanding number who don't, it is redistribution of wealth that will eventually bring us all down to poverty-level.
So stop redistributing wealth to the wealthy. Did you see soaring poverty rates during the 1990's? Were there somehow no rich people at that time?
Our manufacturing base has been diminishing...
LOL! We are by quite a large margin the largest manufacturing economy in the world. What you are whining over this time is that the number of manufacturing JOBS has been declining, and so it has. In fact it has declined in ALL of the top twelve manufacturing economies since the 1990's, and US losses are only about average for the group. Consider poor China. They've lost more than 13 million manufacturing jobs in that time. That's more than the total number that the US has.
...and our primary economic sector is now service-based.
So? Not much more than a hundred years ago, we went from being an agricultural to an industrial economy. Some people whined about that as well.
Whatever you fund grows. Throw money into welfare, you get more people living on welfare.
False premise. Also irrational and counter-factual. Thanks largely to the War on Poverty for instance, poverty rates were effectivley cut in half during the 1960's. Did you take that into account? How about its tendency to climb during Republican administrations and fall during Democratic administrations ever since? Some that of course may well be due just to the general economic ineptitude of Republicans, but still.
It doesn't lift them out of poverty, it creates more poverty-minded people. Fund women having illigitimate babies, and you get more illigitimate babies. Fund sickness and disability, and you get more sickness and disability.
Yes, it's just happeneing left and right -- people infecting themselves, poking their own eyes out, cutting off their own limbs with a chainsaw. Do you expect to be taken seriously with brfainless notions like these? (What happened when we funded "abstinence only" sex ed, by the way? Huge outbreak of abstinence?)
Whether you are willing to acknowledge it or not, we are creating more of the problems we have because we so willingly fund them. Most people are like water. They will take the path of least resistance and settle in where they know they can subsist, because it's easier that way.
Speak for yourself, dear, and easier than what? Ever tried living at a susbsistence level? Nobody likes it. We have more people on assistance today because of the economic collapse engineered by a bunch of dingbat Republicans. Had you heard of it? It was in all the papers. And can you believe it, the sponsors of it now try to scapegoat the victims! What a bunch of low-lifes! And of course, if you are able-bodied and not caring for a dependent full-time, there are typically work requirements if you want to continue receiving benefits. Doesn't sound like you've bothered to look into any of that either.
Life is hard, and when you let people believe that it's not, you are creating an enslavement-minded individual who will willingly let the government take from others to give to them. We are creating a terrible mind-set in the modern American these days, and we will pay dearly for it- all of us.
That's pure unadulterated right-wing crapola. Why don't you tell us again about all those WMD in Iraq?
