Every American is on the dole to some degree
By Michael Grunwald, Time
The sun is shining on Miami Beach, and I wake up in subsidized housing. I throw on a T-shirt made of subsidized cotton, brush my teeth with subsidized water and eat cereal made of subsidized grain. Soon the chaos begins, two hours of pillow forts, dance parties and other craziness with two hyper kids and two hyper Boston terriers, until our subsidized nanny arrives to watch our 2-year-old.
My wife Cristina then drives to her subsidized job while listening to the subsidized news on public radio. I bike our 4-year-old to school on public roads, play tennis on a public court and head home for a subsidized shower. Then I turn on my computer with subsidized electricity and start work in my subsidized home office.
It’s just another manic Monday, brought to us by the deep pockets of Big Government. The sunshine is a natural perk, and while our kids are tax-deductible, the fun we have with them is not. The dogs are on our dime too. Otherwise, taxpayers help support just about every aspect of our lives.
Of course, we’re taxpayers too, and we don’t exactly fit the stereotype of entitled welfare queens.
Cristina is an attorney and until recently was a small-business owner. I’m a journalist, an economic red flag these days, but I work for the company behind the Harry Potter and Batman movies, so at press time I was still getting paid.
My family’s subsidies are not the handouts to the poor that help fuel America’s political culture wars but the kind of government goodies that make the comfortable even more comfortable. Our federally subsidized housing, for example, is a two-story Art Deco home in the overpriced heart of South Beach. But our mortgage interest is a personal deduction, my home office is a business deduction, and federal subsidies keep our flood insurance cheap. Even our property taxes are deductible.
So thanks for your help.
The 2012 election is shaping up as a debate over Big Government, but it is only loosely tethered to the reality of Big Government. The vast majority of federal spending goes to defense, health care and Social Security plus interest payments on the debt we’ve run up paying for defense, health care and Social Security. Nondefense discretionary spending–Washingtonese for “everything else,” from the FBI to the TSA to the center for grape genetics–amounts to only 12 percent of the budget.
Still, it’s a big government. The U.S. did not spend even $1 billion in 1912; it will spend $3.8 trillion in 2012 on everything from Missing Alzheimer’s Disease Patient Assistance ($593,842) to Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting ($9,409,400), from mortgage insurance for manufactured homes ($64,724,187) to ironworker training on Indian reservations.
There will be an additional $1.3 trillion in tax expenditures, federal benefits (like the deductions for my 401(k) and my nanny’s salary) that are basically identical to those normal spending programs except that they happen to be provided through the tax code.
The rise of the Tea Party and the weakness of the Obama economy have fueled a Republican narrative about Big Government as a threat to liberty, redistributing wealth from honorable Americans to undeserving moochers, from taxpaying “makers” to freeloading “takers.”
In fact, most Americans are makers and takers — proud of our making, blind to our taking.
Republicans often point out that only half the country pays income taxes, but just about all Americans pay taxes: payroll taxes, state and local taxes, gas taxes and much more. The problem is that we pay in $2.5 trillion and pay out $3.8 trillion. And those trillions of dollars don’t all go to undeserving moochers, except insofar as we’re all undeserving moochers.
7am: Subsidized food, water, electricity and clothing
The right routinely portrays government as a giant mess of Solyndra failures, lavish agency conferences in Vegas and pork for society’s leeches. But my taxpayer-supported morning didn’t feel like mooching at the time.
For example, my family pays for that water I use to brush my teeth, about $100 a month. But that’s a small fraction of the true cost of delivering clean water to our home and treating the sewage that leaves our home. And it certainly doesn’t reflect the $15 billion federal project to protect and restore the ravaged Everglades, which sit on top of the aquifers that provide our drinking water.
Most Americans think of the water that comes out of our faucets as an entitlement, not a handout, but it’s a government service, and it’s often subsidized.
Similarly, my family pays more than $200 a month for the electricity that powers our toaster at breakfast. But that number would be much higher if the feds didn’t subsidize the construction, liability insurance and just about every other cost associated with my utility’s nuclear power plants while also providing generous tax advantages (“depletion allowances,” “intangible drilling costs” and so forth) for natural gas and other fossil fuels.
The $487 we’re paying this year for federal flood insurance is also outrageously low, considering that our low-lying street floods all the time, that a major hurricane could wipe out Miami Beach and that the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America estimates that premiums in high-risk areas would be three times as high without government aid.
Some federal largesse — tax breaks for NASCAR racetracks ($40 million) and subsidies for rum distilleries ($172 million) and rural airports ($200 million)–is just silly. There’s no reason my poker buddies should be able to deduct the gambling losses I inflict on them once a month. (Just kidding, guys!)
The silliest handouts that brighten my morning are the boondoggles that funnel billions to America’s cotton and grain farmers and maybe knock a few cents off the price of my T-shirts and my kids’ breakfast waffles. Uncle Sam sends at least $15 billion every year to farmers and agribusinesses in the form of grants, loans, crop insurance and other goodies. The farm lobby is so omnipotent in Washington that when the World Trade Organization ruled that U.S. handouts give our cotton farmers an unfair advantage over Brazil, the U.S. cut a deal to shovel $147 million a year to Brazilian cotton farmers rather than kick our own farmers off the dole. Our food and clothing may seem cheap, but, oh, we pay for them.
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A “CONSERVATIVE”
Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot
full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for
minimum water quality standards.
He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His
medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure
their safety and for them to work as advertised.
All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s
medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their
employers for paid medical insurance, and now Joe gets it too. He prepares
his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to
eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat-packing
industry.
Joe takes his morning shower, reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is
properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents
because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting
on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and
takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree-
hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our
air.
He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to
work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation
fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public
transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a
contributor.
Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay,
medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some
liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.
Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t
want his employees to call the union.
If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker
compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think
he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It’s noon time. Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some
bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some
liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who
ruined the banking system before the depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that
Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and
earned more money over his lifetime.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at
his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dad’s; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal
fought for car safety standards.
He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live
in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers
didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electricity until
some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and
demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republicans would still
be sitting in the dark)
He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social
Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could
take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad
he gets back in his car for the ride home.
He turns on a radio talk show. The host keeps saying that liberals
are bad and conservatives are good (He doesn’t tell Joe that his
beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit
Joe enjoys throughout his day). Joe agrees, “We don’t need those big
government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self-made man
who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I
have.”
Thank you Dumbfounded. That was brilliant!