US consumers are increasingly dependent on Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP and Social Security.
Personal Current Transfer Receipts Definition
Q: What are Personal Current Transfer Receipts?
A: The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) explains PCTR consists of income payments to persons for which no current services are performed. It is the sum of government social benefits and net current transfer receipts from business.
Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), housing subsidies, and Social Security are examples.
Personal Current Transfer Receipts Detail
Personal Current Transfer Receipts Detail Amounts
- Total PCTR: 4.99 trillion
- Social Security: 1.58 trillion
- Medicare: 1.24 trillion
- Medicaid: 1.02 trillion
- Veteran’s Benefits: 299 billion
Those numbers are seasonally adjusted annualized. The total of SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and Veteran’s Benefits is 4.14 trillion.
SNAP (food stamps) are about $100 billion annually. Monthly figures not available to download with the rest.
PCTR as Percent of Total Income
PCTR as s percent of income tends to spike in recessions but not recover to the prior low.
PCTR as Percent of Total Income Detail
Percent of Income Discussion
- In 1959, PCTR was 3.7 percent of income. It’s now 19 percent.
- Between January 2017 and February 2020 PCTR as a percent of income fell from 17.4 percent to 16.9 percent.
- The post-Covid low was 17.7 percent in December of 2023.
- Since December of 2023 PCTR as a percent of income has risen to 19.0 percent.
Given the ongoing wave of baby boomer retirements, increasing reliance on PCTR over time is a given.
Benefits are $5 trillion and rising.
Related Posts
February 12, 2025: Trump Says he Will Love and Cherish Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
The new softer side of Trump now cherishes Medicaid. Is everyone happy?
March 21, 2025: Musk says “Social Security is the Biggest Ponzi Scheme of all Time.” Agree?
In contrast, PolitiFact says SS is not a Ponzi scheme. Who is correct?
April 1, 2025: Millions of Baby Boomers Are Not Financially Prepared for Retirement
Are you ready for retirement? Tens of millions of boomers aren’t.
July 7, 2025: The Peak 65 Moment and Why Social Security Is Going Bust
About 11,000 people turn 65 every day. This will last for 3 years.
In 2023, there were an estimated 2.7 covered workers per each Social Security beneficiary. By 2035, the Trustees estimate there will be 2.4 covered workers for each beneficiary.
Social Security will be insolvent by 2032. See above link for details.
Pension payments from government or business, and inheritances are categorized as PCTR. Many individuals on pensions make more than the average household income. Governments and business cut back on services and raise prices because their pension funds are under water. A lot of current spending can be attributed to well heeled pensioners. Even in China, Chinese pension money is courted by elite vacation resorts.
Creating money out of thin air when granting a loan and collecting interest out of the sweat from the brow of workers makes government largesse ♾️% of banking income.
Including social security to this metric is a little misleading. It’s a system we have specifically paid into and expect to receive on retirement. Hardly comparable to the rest.
SNAP is real. People don’t get paid enough.
If you’re a billionaire CEO and your employees can’t afford to eat, there’s a problem with your company.
Pay-as-you-go systems can not go insolvent
Recalling Lenin, not fondly. but he sure could turn a phrase: “no society is more than three missed meals away from chaos.”
It is true ~ and why I refuse to live in a city or urban area. I’ll own land or investment properties, but no way will I live there.
I would be curious to see PCTR compared to income from current employment
(wages, not investment returns, stock bonuses, business income, etc).
Just curious Mike any idea how that compares to the EU countries? Other major economies?
Medicaid would be going up higher than normal last 10 years or so with all the migration, no?
All EU countries are different, for instance, we have no Medicare or Medicaid;
private insurance is mandatory.
I would also dispute that Medical costs are a personal income transfer — all of it goes directly to the Medi-Pharma racket, just like Defense spending goes to the MiC racket.
Comparisons are hard. Property taxes here do not fund schools.
In countries where the government funds education, taxes pay instead of personal income, but whether it’s you or the government paying for education & sanitation or healthcare, it’s the same money, just different in whether it’s reckoned as public or private spending. In most EU countries a lot of benefits (unemployment; welfare; healthcare) tend to be administered as insurance trust funds and are separate from government revenue accounts.
I am surprised it is only 20%. I suspect it is much more than that. Esp. if you include nonproductive subsidized employment.
form zh, same theme
=$400 Inflation Refund Checks Now Being Mailed Out To 8.2 Million NY Households=
obv. it is nothing in all grand scheme. less than $ 5 bil!
but it is pretty much 10% OF ALL HOUSEHOLDS in usa !!!
so how 400$ would help? it is 1 weeek groceries, at best!!!
Political maff.
Your government is thinking of you.
I don’t know where you buy your groceries but $400 will cover a month for me.
Why would this come as a surprise to anyone? Its been well known for 50 years that the boomer generation would be like the “pig going through the python.” Social Security and Medicare funding was set up to accommodate this demographic anomaly.
What has changed over the years is the adoption of predatory capitalism and Economic Darwinism in income distribution and and US tax policy. Less income is going to middle and working class taxpayers that actually fund Social Security, and Medicare. These programs are funded by payroll taxes, only on earned income up to $174,000. Investment income and high income earnings make little or no contribution.
As income and wealth distribution has skewed to the top 1% and 10%, their tax rates had gone down, and the availability of tax avoidance schemes has mushroomed.
This country once had an implicit social contract that promised these benefits to workers. We were played for suckers by the oligarchs to now demand evermore, and middle class workers be damned.
Your not wrong.
What social contract we had was first established in the Atlanta Charter (1941) the UN (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (1948), Civil Rights Act (1964) and many more.
All of that is being destroyed by the worlds most powerful man-baby at an astonishing rate and whole hearted support of people who think they’ll get a seat at the table.
What’s left is mercantilism of WW1 and earlier. (WW1 victors all made land grabs to expand or stabilize their empires). I see the beginnings of colonialism and empire building all over with arguments to annex Canada, Greenland, Panama, Taiwan, Ukraine, Poland, Gaza…
examine the countries without social safety nets, or cut safety nets
are those places you would want to live?
Odd that the military Keynesiaism Department of War expenses are not included. War socialism is a huge government expense. It is constantly increasing and is certainly considered an entitlement for the warmonger corporations.
And the money spent should be subtracted from GDP.
O/T: Thought this was an interesting tidbit on TPTB creating/infiltrating/sabotaging causes.
###########
…these tactics go back to the 19th century when William A. A. Carsey, a covert operative working for the Democratic Party infiltrated labor organizations and other independent political groups with the goal of sabotaging them, coopting their messaging, and siphoning votes to the Democratic Party.
Biographer Mark A. Lause calls Carsey a “pioneer of modern astro-turfing,” who “foreshadowed modern-day Democratic Party covert operators” that transformed the Green Party into an “allied outrider of the Democratic Party” and set up front groups—like MoveOn.org and Brand New Congress.
After he was outed and expelled by the Knights of Labor at their 1892 convention, Knights of Labor leader Terence V. Powderly called Carsey a “traitor to the cause of labor.”
###########
https://www.unz.com/article/discovery-of-disrupter-in-assange-defense-brings-attention-to-how-agent-provocateurs-set-back-activist-groups-and-the-left/
What is ‘Total Personal Income’ ? How is the TOTAL contents seen?
x
The thing is – very, very few people have a choice when it comes to medicare (less than 10 yrs work). Everyone else has to take it (but can add on to it).
In the next 5-7 years tariffs might create shortages. Shortages cause higher prices and inflation. Millennials and zoomers wages will rise in real terms, but those on gov goodies will be sacrificed. Tariffs, higher tax collection, a smaller gov and negative real rates will enable the gov to cut debt. China is hoarding gold, while deflating their currency. China M-2 is 33T CNY x 0.14 = $4.62T. If China covers 20% of their currency with gold, their gold reserves should be: $1T/$4,000oz ==> 250 million oz. The US needs over one billion oz in gold reserves. Ilan do we have 1B oz in Ft Knox.. If the US gov is fully committed to cutting debt, gold will deflate. China will need 400M/500M oz gold reserves. Pegging frontier currencies to gold is bs.
China gold reserves is 67 million oz. China M 2 velocity is 9%.
All of this ‘might’, ‘could’, etc, is getting annoying. Truth is, nobody knows. While you’re using practical theory, the reality is we’re charting a path that nobody KNOWS the outcome. Since April ‘Liberation Day’, we haven’t seen the sky falling, nor have we seen shelves stripped, and we haven’t seen CPI or PCE go bonkers, so let’s keep things within perspective.
Might, bc we don’t know what will happen next hour, day, weeks or years. That doesn’t that we can’t think about a few viable options. If the new actory will be ready within a year or two, things can be better for zoomers and millennials. If not things can get worse. If that annoy u so much skip, stay with your groupthink !
The next 5-7 years will be make or break as GenX begins join the boomers in retirement. Like boomers, GenX has been well employed, contributing sizably to SS & Medicare taxes. That source of revenue as they retire will start to go negative like it did for the boomers. A lot of these white-collar jobs will not get replaced, so we’ll see signs of Millennials not making income advancements as previous generations did as the rise of AI takes hold & starts to move beyond culling entry level jobs.
I watched a video of an extremely well-informed Luke Gromen, and he, like others, keeps pointing to 2032 as likely being a really big moment. Part of that sentiment is due to the SSTF going red around that time, but there certainly are several other inputs with one of the biggest being exploding debt servicing costs.
I can only imagine how much further social cohesion & political stability will deteriorate as we move into the final stage of the 4th Turning Crisis stage.
I like the $1 milkshake guy better, something to look forward to.
SS retirement income is funded by employer and employee payments over 4-5 decades. If zero coupon bonds were bought every year with those funds maturing at retirement age, transfers would be a false description. But greedy politicians chose to use those funds instead.
Yeah ,,, and exactly who elected the greedy politicians,, and who got the money,, well that would be the folk whoever elected the politicians,, so we only have ourselves to blame..
During covid the Fed raided bank accounts and transferred goodies to the poor and shingle mums. When the economy opened M2 velocity dropped to 1.2%. Since then in the last 5 years M2 velocity is 1.4%. That’s below inflation rates. Thus, gov goodies deflates. The gov is taking back what they gave during in 2020. Shutting down the gov will accelerate the SNAP back. The unemployed will get less gov goodies in real terms. States will pay less and less. CA will deflate the most.
Plenty of mums out for the fall season.
$5T PCTR/$37T gov debt = 13.5%. M2 velocity is rising in a turtle speed below inflation rate, thus PCTR deflates. Boomer retirement peaked between 2023 and 2026. Their next stop is a coffin. They will reach 80Y in 2026. The gov devalue: Medicare, Medicaid and Vets benefits. SNAP = $130B. WMT gets 25% of that. The gov transfer $33B to WMT via SNAP recipients.
Anyone born in 1946 has a lot in common with someone born in 1964, right? Likewise 1965 and 1980.
The US inflation started in 1949. We fed the Europeans, competed with the
USSR, Vietnam, JFK, MLK…Inflation start to to accelerate after the closure of the Suez canal and ARAMCO confiscation. Until 1964 we had a moderate inflation. Between 1965 and 1982 we had inflation depression. There is nothing in common between the two age groups: 1946/64 and 1965/82, and there will be nothing in common between them in the next decade or two.
The 20th century was about disengaging people from local communities and economies for vast national projects and labor setups. Then that became obsolete. Most humans cannot efficiently deliver much net economic value. So, they will be net consumers. If they are cut off from that role, they will reassert it politically, demanding redistribution. They will consume one way or another, peacefully or violently, legally or illegally. There are worse scenarios than having large populations of pacified net consumers. Consider it a tax unpaid, and overhang of costs, for the projects of the 20th century. My idea would be to taper off the human population: we hit a critical mass of technology and other fields, time to preserve and finally properly husband the other good systems of the planet. and address other risks and prospects than competitively just having more humans.
“My idea would be to taper off the human population:”
Where? In America and the western world we barely reproduce enough to keep our cultures and economies functioning.
Whose human population? Muslim countries? Africa?
= 20pct
just imagine someone would try to BALANCE THE FED. BUDGET
and cut gov. expenditures
Great depression in 1930xxx would look like a Sunday picnic on a lake!!
alx
Depressing stat.. Raising the retirement age for Soc Sec will probably lead to at lot more elderly on SS Disability. I think RFK Jr has done a good job of describing American’s health status. People that have a poor diet, are obsess, and don’t exercise are requiring a large amount of sick care money.
Inflation has had a big negative impact on worker’s incomes as well.
=d job of describing American’s health status.
if you are 25+ years old and need someone to tell you : excercise, eat healthy food, and on
YOU ARE MORON AND DESERVE IT.
I’m, about to start my 2.5 hour daily weighted walk, quite healthy for my age.
The problem of “progressives” is they always wrote checks while requiring nothing of the payees: allowing them to drift into dysfunction further and further. Some are shocking zombies, inter-generationally. Cass Sunstein and others addressed this by proposing “nudge” policies that would set a healthy default for people not setting it for themselves. The right scorned this as “nanny state,” overplaying that bumper sticker tagging, and lurched into its own version of these mistakes. The commies in all their awfulness understood that subsidizing carries power and the imperative to mobilize and guide the subsidized population. USA modern liberals missed this vital piece of the plot. Hence these degraded cities and depraved subcultures: a mockery of freedom and personal autonomy.
good for you.!!
posting =you= I meant : human, adult, etc
no offense to you personally!
BEST WAY TO CUT OFF GOV from YOUR LIFE- stop paying taxes, and–or decrease as much as possible.
The states with the worst obesity problems are not the progressive ones: they are the red ones with the weakest safety nets.
How about if you’re 25+ and work 50 hours a week in a red state with a $7 minimum wage and can barely make ends meet, fresh food is hard to find and expensive and you hardly have time to cook anyway… Maybe you grew up without good modeling of how to cook or eat healthy… These problems are way more ingrained than “lol ur Stoopid”
The real stupid comes from lack of empathy or from understanding how different other people’s life experiences can be compared to your own.
Covid reduced their number by 2 millions. They died within weeks instead of years. Thus Covid reduced SS, medicare and medicaid cost
dont worry , all those extra money sent to Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel!
Mike Pompeo’s “three lighthouses of liberty”. He would have become Nikki Haley’s VP choice if Trump hadn’t turned his head in Butler, PA.
Full retirement age is 67 how much more do you want to raise it?
probably going to 69 or 70
if you want more of something, subsidize it … Ronald The Great
$111 Billion for ACA premium subsidies in 2024.
Luigi!
Does SS include Disability Income? Disability has grown at an accelerated rate since the roll out of the jab in early 2021.
PCTR includes Disability. Not sure if a part of Fred’s download of SS
SS disability started rising after Clinton changed the welfare laws to require able bodies adults to work and or be in a work training program. It has been documented in states that made some type requirement for aid saw the welfare rolls drop. Funny thing about Clinton is that we had a balanced budget, welfare reform and a reform of the criminal justice system to hold accountable chronic offenders. If a republican had done all that you would have heard the left screaming racism. Starting with coke head Bush and on we have been circling the drain. Both parties have betrayed the electorate to enrich themselves like the parasites they are.
“Funny thing about Clinton is that we had a balanced budget…”
Eventually people will stop bandying about this misrepresentation.
The same SS payroll taxes that are inadequate today were in surplus during the late 90s, part of the peak earning years for the Boomer generation. There was also a minor housing cycle peak and the .com stock boom. These combined to create the illusion of fiscal solvency, but underlying budget issues were never addressed and the crisis that is facing the U.S. now was clearly predicted back then and ignored. The 2000 presidential campaign highlighted the using of the excess SS taxes in the general budget (i.e. there is no social security lock box).
Clinton happened to be in office when circumstances were temporarily such that the U.S. had a surplus. The federal budget drawdown from the end of the first Iraq war and welfare “reform” were temporary as was the peak in federal “revenue” (federal tax receipts increased almost 52% from 1992 to 1998). No reasonable observer at that time thought the peak in “revenue”, displayed in this chart relative to GDP, would last.
https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/Chart1_1.jpg
If one prefers numbers:
https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/900c2b0f52e1cc9969cda10bc295013b.pdf
Normally the surplus would have been pissed away for an even greater deficit. Good bipartisan fiscal discipline kept the budget in line. Both parties failed to make reforms so this would continue. Bush is a war criminal and should be in jail for his war crimes. Bin laden was corned and could have been killed/captured in the first six months of the invasion. Instead he got endless war, death and maiming and 7-10 trillion in debt. The MIC was happy. The end result no different now than if he had killed bin laden and left. Those people are ungovernable. That’s why Iraq remained stable under Hussain, just like Powell told his father.
Some might contend that the appearance of fiscal discipline was more due to political infighting impeding the creation of new spending. The SS surplus was max worker:recipient ratio and coincided with part of the Boomer’s peak earning years. Projections at that time pretended that ‘reforms’ would be enacted and that the stock market bubble would not pop, but those were unrealistic expectations.
W and his profligate spending and military exploits are their own separate issue – the temporary surpluses were not going to last so Clinton does not get credit for fixing the budget problem.
Think how much of the economy that 19 percent supports
Farmers want their bennies
200 bil in aid to Argentina
Meanwhile, Argentina doing soybean deals with China
I can’t really care about that. Soybean exports are some 96% controlled by the top 5 or 6 global corporations spreading GMO corruption against farmers and spraying RoundUp on the food.
Then again, since they’re corps, Trump will bail them out
“The new softer side of Trump now cherishes Medicaid. Is everyone happy?”
Look how that turned out. Turns out he actually had no problem cutting it.
Seeing how easy it was to cut Medicaid, next up will be Medicare and SS cuts even though Trump loves and cherishes those too.
trump is a man of his word. trust in the cult leader.
never seen a cult with so many followers having so little in common, and none of whom view their cult leader as a cult leader …
maybe if your side just keeps shooting people and lighting people and things on fire, those of us who preferred trump over harris will come around …
I’m trying to imagine what will halt his wild ride into ever weirder moves. If a thing cannot go on forever, it will stop. Something will reshape the paths of this juggernaut. His high tide is probably right about now. SCOTUS is bending over and taking it, totally swallowing. Perhaps Trump will brook no rational succession plan, and that will break this up into factions. I cannot see tech maximalist libertarians pretending to be compatible with MAGA forever. Maybe bigger predators appear.
all very fair points in my view. wouldn’t be the first time success was its own undoing. in any case, whatever the alternative to maga is, it has to shed the unserious and oftentimes dangerous people and views who are sold out in the extreme left right now. maybe the Democrat party survives that shedding, or maybe something totally new emerges. I maintain that you can call the Republican party today the Republican party, but you cannot relate that thing in any way shape or form to the Republican party of 2000. the same thing has to happen to the Democrat party. it’s one thing if people don’t want to vote for trump/ maga/repubs, but eventually they’re going to need to want to vote for an alternative.
Trump shooting from the hip. Exhibit A (many every week): said NATO countries should shoot down Russian planes. That puts us in a war, potential world war, immediately. OK maybe, but he just fired that one off in a moment’s impulse.
free health care for all who can work but choose not to!!! we need more of that!
Immaterial. When the AI Overlord and its robot minions take over, everything will be free. Money will be obsolete.
The current economic model is on its deathbed. Best to look forward, not backward.
and who will provide the capital to maintain this system … why would anyone do so without a profit incentive, be it monetary or otherwise … the system i believe you’re trying to allude to would require the elimination of scarcity, not simply automating the processes of managing scarce resources …
Yes, when AI/robots can do everything that humans do now and better, then there isn’t any scatity.
yes there is. and I ask again, who provides the capital to maintain this system anyway?
Modern Monetary Theory. Presto, everything will be okay. It’s all that is left. Balancing the budget at the kitchen table was shot in the head by Ronald Reagan in 1980. There no way to do CPR on a rotten corpse. Fiscal responsibility is never coming back; therefore, be like Trump and fully embrace fiscal irresponsibility. The consequences may be vastly less destructive than trying to blow oxygen into a skeleton.
Intriguing how the “Good ol’ USA” is paralleling the fall of previous empires.
A friend said, “America is the greatest country in history and always will be.”
Right. No Athenian, Roman, Dutch, French or Englishman ever thought similarly.
To me, America’s accelerating decline (picture 3rd Century A.D. Rome) is primarily the result of a shift from a “productivity/earn” mindset to “entitled.”
In my eighth decade, I long for the days when integrity and personal responsibility were heralded.
Sadly, if nothing else, it’s a fascinating time to be alive.
Earn the right to be free of the master’s beatings. The entire “decline” is seen in pikettys analysis. The drift towards capital dominating labor is irreversible
There is no way to debate with people who think Charlie Kirk was admirable. Because he wasn’t.
says he/she who hasn’t inspired an entire generation to question authority. nuff said.
i offer to debate this point with you in this forum, publicly. do you accept? you opened with an absolute statement, so i’ll allow you to support/defend this statement as our opening round.
Hello Bill. Were you asking me to debate or JCH1952? Candidly, trying to look at this from many angles, I just don’t see how ANYONE could view Charlie as less than an exemplary human being.
hello, mike. certainly was not asking to debate you. that comment was directed squarely at JCH1952? as well as any of those who’s hatred and ignorance come through their words/posts. feels like a duty these days to lovingly but unapologetically confront hatred and ignorance. my experience is that those filled with hatred and ignorance typically refuse to debate but that won’t stop me from trying. you strike me as anything other than either hateful or ignorant based on your original post here.
Like someone I deeply admired and respected, Charlie Kirk, I encourage discussion/debate. I would very much like to hear from those who disagree with my assessments.
you haven’t given much to disagree with. i believe there are both economic and moral reasons for which we are following the path of the fat and the dumb. it seems difficult for the fat to live hungry. and as the fat become fatter, it seems equally difficult to stop the ceremonial from temporarily achieving the same rank as the moral, at which point we are due for hard reckonings.
Charlie Kirk was a scumbag, there’s your disagreement. Imagine when you die that people can’t quote anything positive you ever said because everything you ever said was basically hate speech.
When you deliberately distort and selectively present the truth, you lie. – charlie kirk.
Oh right I forgot to mention his hypocrisy
The only memorable thing about him long term will be his manner of death and the right wing hysteria following it. Otherwise he was as meaningful as rush Limbaugh…. When’s the last time anyone thought about THAT turd?
a time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying you are mad, you are not like us. that one’s from St Anthony. but your hatred and ignorance are the face of madness. it’s not too late to change.
Calling a spade a spade is not madness. What’s madness is trying to redefine an awful human being as some kind of martyr.
“Some people bring happiness by arriving; others by leaving — and a few only by dying.”
Hallmark of madness, not knowing you’re mad. again, it’s not too late to change. hatred and ignorance are not the road to joy.
see what I did there, because you were deliberately distorting and selectively presenting the truth. let’s play this game. I’ve got tons of quotes. I wish you weren’t so hateful and ignorant, but your hatred and ignorance will not go unchallenged or unchecked. hatred and ignorance like this has proven itself to be physically dangerous to too many americans.
Hello Phil, can you please cite specific examples of Charlie spewing hate speech?
No surprise after generations of inflation.
The spending will continue because the government of all stripes attended the free lunch school of economics.
We need to get ahead of the negative trend that libertarian “free” market theoretics, oligarchy and AI have made necessary and that is government aid that requires high taxation to keep the general populace from slipping entirely into poverty. That means we need to instead use strategic monetary gifting to make universal purchasing power abundance permanent with a universal dividend and a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale.
Think a new thought. It won’t kill you, only your mistaken, worn out and ego involved orthodoxies regarding money and economics.
It is possible that we could trim some of the defense spending. Hard to believe there is no waste over there.Could rethink the billions we gave to Homeland Security – a complete boondoogle with a lot of contracters getting rich on the government. Instead use e-verify and amazingly a lot of people could be identified without all the drama of masked people dragging people off the streets. We have the technology, lets use it.
shoot me your address and i’ll mail you a ticket to havana. first class, to match the comfort you take for granted.
nothing benefits the poor like massive dollar devaluations following the endless creation of unsound money … on behalf of the poor, i beg you, please don’t ever be in a position to try this evil you’re proposing here …
the fact that you think what you’re proposing is new is frightening, and another great indictment against the american education system …
Never worry as taco will cut this estimate in half or more.
Social spending per capita puts the US at around #11 globally, right in the middle of the pack compared to wealthier European nations.
As a total percentage of GDP spending, the US is around #22 globally, behind much of Europe.
True. But many other countries have systems in place that suitably fund their spending and don’t have the ticking time bomb that is US social security. (Though some also have the same issues.)
Does your “social spending” include all those categories of transfer payments? Their medical costs are drastically lower than the US because they don’t have fascist medical-industrial complexes… and they have loser-pays tort courts.
And then they can afford better to take from the earners and re-distribute to non-earners because they don’t spend a trillion $s every year manning 700 military bases strewn over all the planet and paying for wars in the opposite hemisphere from the one they live in.
You seriously think it is appropriate and healthy for19% of income in a country being money taken from earners and redistributed to non-earners?
If non earners include retired people and disabled or sick people who can’t work or unemployed people who can’t find work, absolutely. Frankly I can’t think of a better way to spend the money than helping my fellow citizens. As you point out, there are many worse ways to spend the money.
I don’t disagree with you Phil, but, define “my fellow citizens”
Thats the problem today. To me, my fellow citizens are not the criminal element that has invaded the country under our last president, one that you obviously voted for. Can we agree on that?
Lets at least deport illegal aliens that have committed felonies and or are convicted felons from the countries they came from. But apparently that is not allowed today either.
Democrats made Abrego Garcia a living martyr for Gods sake. I could freakin care less about his rights nor is he one of my fellow citizens. There are hundreds examples of dangerous illegal alien criminals like him but apparently to the left he has as many rights or more apparently than my fellow citizens that have lived here their entire life.
If you are here working, not commiting crimes and truly here to work and give your kids a better opportunity in life then the you can fall under the DACA rules and America can make it work.
Who are my fellow citizens?
I don’t hate Mexicans or brown people or whatever you’re on about and frankly as long as their wages are taxed (and generally they are) I could care less about all that distasteful nativist stuff.
yeah.
this bulls11hit somehow USA is NOT socialist W/ 40+ MIL ON FOOD STAMPS
AND France/Germany are is mind boggling.
alx
ps
of course communism is different animal!
china is NOT communist!! i
china is 1party dictatorship and capitalistic economy, and USSR was communist economy w/ 1 party dictatorship
= percentage of GDP spending,
taxes are higher in Europe. personal taxs, VAT. etc
Hmmm 🤔
Thank you. PLEASE do this by State/Commonwealth!
California with Newsom’s lies about our great economy, with #1 in homelessness, #1 in unemployment…40% of the residents are on Medi-Cal.
https://www.statsamerica.org/sip/rank_list.aspx?rank_label=censgovtre_exp_1_c&item_in=040
The numbers are not very predictable and don’t fall into a clear red/blue pattern.
Also per capita CA does not have the highest homelessness rate- Hawaii does. CA is around 5th place.