Posted by Tina
I’m a human being doing my best every day to be truthful and accurate. I was accused of lying recently when I wrote in comments that there were more people in America receiving benefits that there were people working. I finally found the source of the information I had heard on the radio at CNS News, whose source was the Census Bureau:
(CNSNews.com) – Americans who were recipients of means-tested government benefits in 2011 outnumbered year-round full-time workers, according to data released this month by the Census Bureau.
They also out-numbered the total population of the Philippines.
There were 108,592,000 people in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs, the Census Bureau said in data released this week. Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, there were 101,716,000 people who worked full-time year round in 2011. That included both private-sector and government workers.
That means there were about 1.07 people getting some form of means-tested government benefit for every 1 person working full-time year round.
Now some of you may argue that part time workers should be accounted for in this report. Maybe so but the offhand remark I made in comments is still a pretty astounding reality!
This is not America…and if this is what Obama’s vision for a “fundamental transformation” of America looks like, then it is time for him to either change course dramatically or get the heck out of Dodge.
Americans need good full time jobs! (And we still need affordable health care insurance)
Nobody said it was a lie. We just pointed out that it’s no small quantity of full-time private sector workers who are collecting public benefits.
Which is a real sock in the eye to the private sector … deny it as you like.
You bet I like.
To believe you are correct you would have to also believe that business people are just dying to go fail and go bankrupt.
You’de have to believe that they went to all of the trouble and risk to go into business because they wanted to be in a position to fire people and barely survive.
Man you people on the left are brain dead when it comes to what motivates business people.
Get that man in the White House to take off the restraints and the big ball and chain called Obamacare. His policies for recovery and growth are a complete failure…and we told you they would be back in 2007.
Put the power of the people on it and you will have good jobs…millions of them!
And someone did say it was a lie.
I did say this statistic was a lie, and I stand by it. It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. As CNS admits, the Census Bureau’s classification of “recipients” includes “anyone residing in a household in which one or more people received benefits from the program.” In other words, it counts people who may not be themselves government aid recipients just because they live in a household with someone who does. I’m not sure why the government does this.
The CNS article compares this number to the number of full-time workers, not the number of people living in a household with a full-time worker. Of course the former number would be higher, because it’s including everyone in a household, not just the recipient, while the latter is only counting individual full-time workers.
An honest comparison of welfare recipients to workers would have to either only count actual recipients of welfare rather than everyone residing with them, or it would have to include anyone residing in a household with someone who worked full time as a full-time worker. Obviously the former strategy would be more accurate.
So no, the claim that there are more people on welfare than full-time workers is not supported by the evidence.
Furthermore, the comparison neglects the significant overlap between full-time workers and welfare recipients. They are not distinct, opposite categories. Many welfare recipients ARE full-time workers. Despite having a full-time job, they make so little that they qualify for government aid. This is a neat Rorschach test; conservatives look at this fact and think that government aid is too generous, liberals look at it and see that employers aren’t paying enough. Given that the minimum wage today is at a historic low, I think the latter view is more rational.
If you want less people on welfare, you have to account for the fact that many of these people are working, they’re just not making enough. That means you should be fighting for higher wages so that they can get off welfare. That doesn’t even necessarily mean abandoning your belief that the government shouldn’t set wages; you could push for stronger unions so that workers would have more power to bargain for higher wages themselves, without government interference.
But you’re against strong welfare programs, raising the minimum wage, AND stronger unions. You have no practical ideas for how to directly help workers who would like to get off the government dole. Your only solution is to “take off the restraints” of their employers. That will do nothing to directly stimulate the economy. Trickle-down doesn’t work when the problem is low demand.
Chris: “In other words, it counts people who may not be themselves government aid recipients just because they live in a household with someone who does.”
If I had to hazard a guess I would bet that in most of those households everyone living in the home benefits. I can’t imagine that single mothers, for instance, would deny their children the food they buys with food stamps. If two single people are living together and one of them gets a disability check and pays part of the heating bill or the rent, both benefit!
It sure is evident that you are the new generation American. You have never lived in a country where people actually work, expect to work, and consider resorting to taking a government handout something that is the very last resort rather than a lifestyle!
The comparisons purpose was to point out a very troubling trend. If you can’t see that then you deserve to live in the deadbeat socialist country your apathy and indifference will surely create.
“You have no practical ideas for how to directly help workers who would like to get off the government dole.”
Chris that isn’t true. Not only have I pointed out countless times that opportunities to work increased dramatically under policies embraced by Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton and Bush, I have also said that I believe spending money on training individuals would make more sense than endless welfare checks. I have also decried the lousy schools, particularly in poor neighborhoods, and the falling scores that have dropped our performance scores. Given the horrendous amount of money we spend on education this condition is deplorable. Education needs reform and the stranglehold that the education unions have on the system have hurt education and our education dollars.
I am not against raising the min wage because I want to oppress people. I am against it because the small businesses that it would affect would be harmed.
The point was well made. Our nation is slipping into dependency to a dangerous level. It addresses the big picture that we had better learn to address with policies that will uplift people and make them strong. Without a strong workforce all of those socialist programs you believe to be so damned important will collapse. Do you care? Because you seem to be oblivious to the greater concern…we need people who want to work and we need good JOBS! We need to do a better job of preparing people for adulthood.
Democrats have shaped more and bigger socialist policies for over seven decades and it has brought us to this terrible condition. I am at a loss as to how to bring people like you to the realization that it isn’t working..not at all….it is ultimately doing great harm.
I personally think people still want to work, make good money, and provide for their own needs. You, however, often make me doubt myself.
I heard on the news that more people were on benefits that were working. The Sunday TV economic talks was stating that with so many on benefits the system would collapse as there are not enough people working to support it.
Since Obamacare people are losing their full time work has been reduced to part time which of course means less taxes.
Tina this is not the first time you were called a liar,as I recall it was the same people you must have hit a nerve as they were reduced to name calling.
AS I recall you have not done the same.
The reason the government assistance count includes other members in the household is because the amount increase per member. A single person receives less than a mother with four children. Therefore, those additional members are counted too since they also receive additional funds.
The private sector worker’s salary is for work performed and not prorated by the number of persons the check supports.
I completely agree with the way the accounting was presented by the Census Bureau.
Harriet I do my best but admit it is hard sometimes not to reply in kind. I criticize attitudes and opinions, and I try to allow myself a passionate response, but do my best to avoid personal name calling.
The truth is I try to see beyond attitudes and remember that I am addressing a whole person. I love people of all stripes warts and all and really do want people’s lives and our country to work. That is my passion; to see people be the best they can be.
The current situation should act as a wake up call and it astounds me that even these horrible conditions haven’t penetrated the ideology and the belief systems.
I guess all we can do is keep putting it out there and learn ourselves as we go along. thanks for your support!
Peggy good point! Thanks for your input.
Walmart the #1 USA employer and their P/T employees collecting food stamps, why do we not just cut all walmart employees off aid and watch the fall out. LOL
I mean the walmart children who inherited their wealth can handle it right?
Critical thinking takes the facts and all the data, not 1 fact and spin it.
LOL Lions and Tigers and bears! I am glad This is the state of California and not the State of Jefferson.
Look Texas is Koch country maybe we need to cut all federal aid off to Texas and that can be the new tea party country.
ya Got all the originally written agendas written there, The puppet masters of the TP the Koch’s Ross, rand Paul, perry, a new Koch pipeline oil spill. That would be pure heaven right!
Corporate welfare? 1 in 4 corporations pay no taxes after loopholes. Wells Fargo pays no taxes, ya see all data must be collected and analyzed. Mainstream Media is one big money laundering scam the same people circling money and getting rich.
No one watches TV anymore. TV is where we go on the chats and make fun of the paid puppets all of them.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/10/30/2859041/texas-koch-pipeline-spill/
I’m really enjoying the work of this Josh Barro guy, and I’ve learned a new word! Derp.
***
“Yesterday, I set off a bit of a storm among economic policy writers by using the term “derp.” Gawker’s Max Read says we all sound stupid and demands that we stop.
I’m not going to comply, and I have a feeling Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman isn’t going to either.
“Derp” is a useful term for a concept that never had its own word. Since derp is on the rise, we need a term for it now more than ever.
Read says “derp” is “a word for ‘stupidity.'” Not quite. All derp is stupid, but not everything that is stupid is derp. Until yesterday, I was with Pulitzer Prize winner Nick Confessore on this:
I can’t define derp. I just know it when I see it.
— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) June 4, 2013
But now we have a rigorous definition of derp, thanks to Prof. Noah Smith. It turns out that derp is actually a Bayesian probability concept:
Bayesian probability basically says that “probability” is, to some degree, subjective. It’s your best guess for how likely something is. But to be Bayesian, your “best guess” must take the observable evidence into account. Updating your beliefs by looking at the outside world is called “Bayesian inference”. Your initial guess about the probability is called your “prior belief”, or just your “prior” for short. Your final guess, after you look at the evidence, is called your “posterior.” The observable evidence is what changes your prior into your posterior.
How much does the evidence change your belief? That depends on three things. It depends on A) how different the evidence is from your prior, B) how strong the evidence is, and C) how strong your prior is…
When those people keep broadcasting their priors to the world again and again after every new piece of evidence comes out, it gets very annoying. After every article comes out about a new solar technology breakthrough, or a new cost drop, they’ll just repeat “Solar will never be cost-competitive.” That is unhelpful and uninformative, since they’re just restating their priors over and over. Thus, it is annoying. Guys, we know what you think already.
English has no word for “the constant, repetitive reiteration of strong priors”. Yet it is a well-known phenomenon in the world of punditry, debate, and public affairs. On Twitter, we call it “derp”.
Which is to say, a policy commentator is “derpy” when his or her (usually his) prior assumptions about the world are so unwarrantedly strong that he is unswayable by evidence. Derpers have a faith-based approach to policy.
Derp is a problem in political debates always and everywhere, but these days it is especially epidemic on the right. Derp is what leads conservatives to insist that hard money is a good idea even as it wrecks the economies of southern Europe; that tax rate cuts are the key to economic growth from any economic and policy baseline; or that Mitt Romney will win the election even when the clear consensus of the polls is that he is behind.
Unfortunately, derp isn’t going away anytime soon. And as long as we have derp, we’re going to need ‘derp.'”
***
He’s an editor at Business Insider Magazine, and he has a solid grasp of the problem, but what to do about it? We’s all baffled. Except that it would be really stupid to allow derp to dictate public policy.
Dbueno, aka, Dewey thanks for the same old tired opinions. the independent claim gets more and more suspect every time you post. Think Progress…really?
Come on tell the truth; you are actually a Soros grandchild or cousin.
Libby, I assume quoting? “Derp is a problem in political debates always and everywhere, but these days it is especially epidemic on the right.”
His statement disqualifies him. He reveals himself to be a person solidly locked into the leftist bubble blathering on in derpy fashion about the right.
I get the concept but my heavens man look in a mirror!
So now I am a liar? I am not an Independent cause I see through the Koch brothers Fog? LOL
I post a fact it is a fact. My opinion is my opinion.
Soros gave money to both Mitt and Obama.
Sorry the majority of the country is on to the Tea Party. Sorry it is not grass roots. LOL
I hate both parties, LOL
I am from California and do not live in the small town bubble. I have traveled, been corporate, lived in many states. Delusional promises will not work. Too high an IQ here.
So which fact is it you dispute? Where was the bad fact?
There are other sources. Like real sources not a blog of propaganda.
Lets debate facts…………You can have a different opinion that is fine with me but which facts is it that was wrong?
fact #1 There is such a thing as junk insurance