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From: dlo@drutx.UUCP (OlsonDL)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: social vs. defense spending: a compromise
Message-ID: <549@drutx.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Nov-85 16:29:10 EST
Article-I.D.: drutx.549
Posted: Tue Nov 12 16:29:10 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Nov-85 21:45:24 EST
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
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[]

In article <792@whuxl.UUCP> orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) writes:
>> From David Olson: 
>> Figure it out for yourself.  If you take the $366 billion spent (at the
>> federal level alone) in 1982 on social welfare and simply divided it
>> among all the poor in the US, they would have received about $12,000
>> each.  A family of four would then have received about $48,000 ($78,000
>> if you include state and local) PLUS whatever income they had before.
>> That leaves only two choices: either the needy are not needy, or the
>> vast majority of the social welfare spending is *not getting* to those
>> people that need help.
>> 
 
>Mr. Olson: just try to take away retired citizens Social Security pension
>to give to the poor and see how far you get!  You will have thousands and
>thousands of senior citizens who worked all their lives and paid into
>the Social Security fund up in arms and demonstrating.
>With good cause: they have paid into the Social Security fund and
>they have the right to the pension they have paid for.

Who says I want to take it away from them!  Indeed, people should get
all they paid into it back. 

>Whether they
>should get the current level of benefits which amounts to more than
>they ever paid into the system is another question.  But in deciding
>this question one also has to calculate what their payments into the
>system are now worth accounting for the interest rate.

As it stands now, on the average for every dollar one collects of the
money he paid into SS, he also collects about 3 from somebody else.  In
reality, SS is another pyramid scheme, no matter who collects it, or
how badly it is needed.
 
>If you take away the several hundred billion of your $366 billion
>figure for "Income Security", that actually goes to Social Security
>that leaves quite a few billions left
>in various programs.

First of all, "social welfare" are not my words.  What I stated was
what was written in the 1985 _Infromation_Please_Almanac_.  If you don't
like the figures, please send your flames to them.

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?  Let us assume, though, that SS does not go to poor people. Tell
ya what.  I'll subtract the SS money from the total federal "social
welfare" stated if you will allow me to include the "social welfare"
spent at the state and local levels.  Fair enough?

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!  Why has the number of poor people
grown by an average of something around 3/4 of a million per year since
Johnson instituted the Great Society?

>They [poor people] are trying to pull their lives together
>and make something of themselves despite incredible obstacles.
>We should give them every encouragement in that effort and provide
>incentives for them to do so by keeping income they earn.

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.
 
>              tim sevener  whuxn!orb

My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

David Olson
..!ihnp4!drutx!dlo