Failure in Action

[Hawker]

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/study-more-half-trillion-dollars-spent-welfare-poverty-levels-unaffected

Federal welfare spending in fiscal year 2011 totaled $668 billion, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate that remains high at 15.1 percent, roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty.

As a non-American,its striking that almost all US welfare goes to people who don't need it in the form of housing and insurance subsidies.  Is change possible or will they carry on wasting money?

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[bb113]

The study is from the cato institute. Even murray rothbard ended up hating them.

After scanning it quickly, Check out figure 2:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/PA694.pdf

1/3rd of this spending is on medicaid. Almost 1/2 is on medicaid +food stamps.

SNAP (food stamps) totals 75 billion USD for 44 million people. It works out to about 1.7K USD per person per year, or 141 USD per person per month (~5 USD per day). Basically a sub sandwhich each day, I just went shopping the other day and got about 16,000 calories of food (~8 days worth) for 30 bucks which works out to about 4 USD per day. It was a mix of canned vegetables, whole-grain wheat noodles, frozen pizza, and ramen.

Edit: Oh yea and tilapia, I also was able to get that. But really the data we want is how much of that spending actually goes to people and how much is spent on administration. Then we also want to know how that money is distributed amongst the beneficiaries so we don't have to assume it is centrally distributed. Also politicians have incentive to deflate the poverty rate by redefining it over time, I'm not sure if this has been going on here.

[bb113]

Oh yea we also need to take into account that the inflation numbers they use are probably underestimates which would exaggerate those spending curves. This is why I hate reading these reports, one could easily waste a day studying it.

[bb113]

For example, the entire increase in spending per person could possibly be accounted for by using alternative inflation rates (we would have to run the numbers to check):


http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts


 modified from: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/PA694.pdf

We could plot the price of pretty much any commodity or aspect of government spending vs the shadow stats inflation estimate and it would look really nice. Compare:






own work: sorry I can't find the data sources right now

This is why I have come to think that pretty much everything politicians and the talking heads argue about is relatively insignificant compared to monetary policy.

[bb113]

[cbeast]

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/study-more-half-trillion-dollars-spent-welfare-poverty-levels-unaffected

Federal welfare spending in fiscal year 2011 totaled $668 billion, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate that remains high at 15.1 percent, roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty.

As a non-American,its striking that almost all US welfare goes to people who don't need it in the form of housing and insurance subsidies.  Is change possible or will they carry on wasting money?

About a third of that money is spent on flood insurance for ocean-front property for the billionaire welfare queens.

[bb113]

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/study-more-half-trillion-dollars-spent-welfare-poverty-levels-unaffected

Federal welfare spending in fiscal year 2011 totaled $668 billion, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate that remains high at 15.1 percent, roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty.

As a non-American,its striking that almost all US welfare goes to people who don't need it in the form of housing and insurance subsidies.  Is change possible or will they carry on wasting money?

About a third of that money is spent on flood insurance for ocean-front property for the billionaire welfare queens.

Random source:

Since 1978, the National Flood Insurance Program has paid more than $38 billion in claims to flood victims. Thanks primarily to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, more than 40 percent of that money has gone to one state: Louisiana.

http://www.insurancequotes.com/flood-insurance-payouts/

So no, flood insurance is more like 1-2 billion USD per year. Regardless, I think that is a dumb program.

[cbeast]

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/study-more-half-trillion-dollars-spent-welfare-poverty-levels-unaffected

Federal welfare spending in fiscal year 2011 totaled $668 billion, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate that remains high at 15.1 percent, roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty.

As a non-American,its striking that almost all US welfare goes to people who don't need it in the form of housing and insurance subsidies.  Is change possible or will they carry on wasting money?

About a third of that money is spent on flood insurance for ocean-front property for the billionaire welfare queens.

Random source:

Since 1978, the National Flood Insurance Program has paid more than $38 billion in claims to flood victims. Thanks primarily to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, more than 40 percent of that money has gone to one state: Louisiana.

http://www.insurancequotes.com/flood-insurance-payouts/

So no, flood insurance is more like 1-2 billion USD per year. Regardless, I think that is a dumb program.

Thanks. That goes to show me about trusting information you get from the Internets.

[bb113]

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/study-more-half-trillion-dollars-spent-welfare-poverty-levels-unaffected

Federal welfare spending in fiscal year 2011 totaled $668 billion, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate that remains high at 15.1 percent, roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty.

As a non-American,its striking that almost all US welfare goes to people who don't need it in the form of housing and insurance subsidies.  Is change possible or will they carry on wasting money?

About a third of that money is spent on flood insurance for ocean-front property for the billionaire welfare queens.

Random source:

Since 1978, the National Flood Insurance Program has paid more than $38 billion in claims to flood victims. Thanks primarily to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, more than 40 percent of that money has gone to one state: Louisiana.

http://www.insurancequotes.com/flood-insurance-payouts/

So no, flood insurance is more like 1-2 billion USD per year. Regardless, I think that is a dumb program.

Thanks. That goes to show me about trusting information you get from the Internets.

Haha, here is a better source, I couldn't find the original fema data though.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40650.pdf

[benjamindees]

Actually, the majority of welfare spending goes to the US military, an institution which has done nothing in the last 50 years but make Americans poorer and less safe.

That's an even bigger "failure in action".

[bb113]

Actually, the majority of welfare spending goes to the US military, an institution which has done nothing in the last 50 years but make Americans poorer and less safe.

That's an even bigger "failure in action".

Way too ADD for me. The numbers looked impressive though. What are the sources for those numbers?

[hashman]

Actually, the majority of welfare spending goes to the US military, an institution which has done nothing in the last 50 years but make Americans poorer and less safe.

That's an even bigger "failure in action".

+10000

[bb113]

I dunno it added up 3 trillion dollars, but that seems too high. I guess it didn't say "per year" or anything like that. Really I couldn't watch the whole thing.

[benjamindees]

ADD as in attention-deficit?  You couldn't watch a four-minute video?

You don't believe that the US budget is $3 trillion per year?

During FY 2011, the federal government spent $3.60 trillion on a budget or cash basis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

[bb113]

It said $3 trillion spent on military. That video had to much motion crap going on and no sources. It didn't give you time to even think about what it was saying or examine it.

[RodeoX]

Could this just be us getting poorer? We don't make anything, we are just a nation of people delivering Chinese goods to each other and BS jobs like "life coach". Why should we think we have enough money to support everyone?

[Taz]

Could this just be us getting poorer? We don't make anything, we are just a nation of people delivering Chinese goods to each other and BS jobs like "life coach". Why should we think we have enough money to support everyone?

Wow, that just sums it up right there.
Prev post is bang on as well, we will all take as much as we can get, doesn't matter where we're from or what we already have.