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Notes -
Here's the doom loop chart
For those of you too lazy to click on the link; the CBO has crunched the numbers and the net effect on income due to transfers (i.e. medicare, medicaid, SS, etc.) beings to be a net negative starting at the middle quintile.
Phrased differently: the top 60% of Americans have less income, on net, because of the massive transfers to the bottom 40%.
Culture war angle: Which quintiles are the sources of new business formation, full time employment, responsible family practices etc?
60+ years of Great Society-ism and horrific perverse incentives for family formation and work mean that we now have a situation where 40% of the population can be - indelicately - called a drag on growth and prosperity. 40%.
Even Sarah McLaughlin can't save this DOGE, and this DOGE can't save America.
What is surprising about that chart? What did you expect? Obviously the transfers benefitting the poor come from the rich. People have been voting for this for the last century, and will keep voting for it. The state's share of the economy will keep growing, first to european levels, then beyond. And it doesn't matter to people how rich in absolute terms "the poor" are, or how much wealth gets destroyed in the process. I find the impulse difficult to understand, perhaps an extreme rawlsian risk aversion (like an insurance against relative poverty) coupled with the egalitarian ideal of equal social status leading to a demand of equal income.
Did you intend to offer a serious reply, or just use my comment as a way to jerk the spotlight towards yourself?
The former. Of course there's always a status element in the background, but in the spirit of collaborative discussion, it should be ignored. Pretend I'm not a person, just a collection of positions, and I will do the same for you.
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