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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: social vs. defense spending: a compromise
Message-ID: <244@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Nov-85 20:04:13 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.244
Posted: Tue Nov 12 20:04:13 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Nov-85 21:48:57 EST
References: <549@drutx.UUCP>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 78

In article <549@drutx.UUCP> dlo@drutx.UUCP (OlsonDL) writes:

>Forgive me if I am incorrect, but in one of your previous articles, you
>claimed that some of the recipients of SS were too poor to live without
>it.  Yet, you also keep claiming that SS is not for poor people.  Which
>is it?  

A large proportion of SS money goes to poor people.  But the
eligibility for benefits is not tied to income level but to
retirement, disability, and survivor status.  Got it?  

>I could not find the figure in the almanac listed above, but in the
>_World_Almanac_ of 1985 it lists the total expenditure by the Social
>Security Administration in 1982 at $176.2 billion.  That leaves about
>$416 billion of social welfare money without SS.  That still means that
>for every poor person (man, woman, and child), over $13,000 of *social
>welfare money* was spent on something in just that year.  For every poor
>family of four, over $52,000 of *social welfare money* was spent on
>something.  WHY ARE THEY STILL POOR!  

For one thing because most of that money wasn't spent on poor people!
You seem to be making the equation "social spending = money spent on
alleviating poverty", which isn't even close to being true, since most
federal social spending is NOT targeted on the poor.  Here is a
breakdown for 1980 (source:  *Budget of the US Govt.*, OMB):

  Function		  		% of federal budget

Retirement & disability				23.9

(This includes Soc. Sec., railroad retirement, railroad disability,
and public employee retirement.)

Unemployment insurance				 3.1

(Not much of this goes to the poor, as far as I am aware.)

Public assistance (for food, housing, etc.)	 6.3

(This is what most people mean by "welfare."  It includes AFDC, SSI,
public housing, and Food Stamps.)

Health (Medicare, Medicaid)			10.0
Education					 2.4
Training, employment (e.g. CETA (R.I.P.))	 1.9
Social services					 1.1

(Social services includes counseling by social workers, for example.)

Veterans' benefits				 3.7

TOTAL						52.4 %

It is apparent that the programs that are targeted on poverty tend
to be small (Food Stamps, AFDC, etc.) while the huge ones, SS and
Medicare, are not aimed at poverty, although they do provide some
significant alleviation.  

Social welfare spending in the US has accomplished much good,
including lifting a *large* proportion of the poor out of poverty.
At the same time, it has not done very much to reduce *income
inequality* (where income includes social welfare benefits).

>Hear! Hear!  I am all in favor of helping those that need help.  But,
>people like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams give pretty good arguments
>that government social spending has hurt more than helped.

But not good enough, unfortunately.  A number of people on the net
like to quote the Sowell-Williams-Murray school of thought as if it
were Holy Gospel, apparently unaware that much of what they say is
controversial and has been challenged and perhaps refuted.  Sowell is
a fine economist who likes to dabble in sociology, ditto for Williams
(yes I know they're black), and Murray is an interesting man but a
dilettante sociologist.  One should try to hear all sides of a debate
rather than assuming that if it's in black and white and sounds
plausible and comforting, it's true.
-- 
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes