October 2, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty, Tags: Big Government, Dependency, Welfare State | 2 Comments
One of Margaret Thatcher’s famous observations was that socialist governments fail because they inevitably run out of other people’s money.
If I’m in a pedantic mood, I will nit-pick that statement by pointing out that she should have said redistributionist governments.
For today’s column, though, let’s not get bogged down in a debate over how socialism is defined.
Instead, I want to share a very depressing set of maps from a report by the Economic Innovation Group. As you can see, the United States went from being a mostly green nation in 1970 to being a mostly tan nation in 2022.
And since green signifies self-reliance (government transfers representing less than 15 percent of personal income) and tan suggests dependency (transfers equaling more than 25 percent of personal income), this is a very worrisome trend.
These maps are depressing because I worry about the implications of the 17th Theorem of Government.
I don’t want societal capital being eroded as more and more people think it’s okay to be wards of the state.
And when you combine that with demographic change (more elderly recipients of government goodies and fewer young people to pay the bills), that is a recipe for an ever-expanding burden of government. In America, Japan, and Europe.
But my first concern is the United States. Sadly, there is little reason for short-run hope given the statist inclinations of both Trump and Harris.
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COMMENTS:
The 2022 map is wrong. The area in and around DC (northern VA and southern Maryland) are depicted in dark green? The entire region is 100% on taxing the other parts of the country; that area should be tan or really dark brown.
Military contractors are 100% on the government dole. They are not private entities. They have only one customer – government. They cannot buy or sell anything except to government, and only with government permission. There is zero difference between military contractors and China’s state owned enterprises.
The absurd “consulting companies”, the think tanks, the law firms that mostly or entirely focus on lobbying, that SAIC corporation which facilitates higher than government pay for doing government work. The whole place is one big transfer payment from taxpayers to federal employees
One significant change from 1970 to 2022 is demographics. There are many more retirees in 2022, so transfer payments have naturally become a higher percentage of income (Social Security).
HOWEVER, there are too many transfer payments of all types, so fear is still warranted. Just not as much as those maps suggest.