The number of counties dependent on government aid has surged over time. The lead chart shows political party affiliation.
The Wall Street Journal has a great article on the Growing Reliance of Americans Are Dependence on Government Aid over time. That is a free link.
Americans’ reliance on government support is soaring, driven by programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
That support is especially critical in economically stressed communities throughout the U.S., many of which lean Republican and are concentrated in swing states crucial in deciding the presidential election. Neither party has much incentive to dial back the spending.
The big reasons for this dramatic growth: A much larger share of Americans are seniors, and their healthcare costs have risen. At the same time, many communities have suffered from economic decline because of challenges including the loss of manufacturing, leaving government money as a larger share of people’s income in such places.
This spending accounts for a big and growing share of the national debt. But this year’s presidential candidates, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, have said little about reining it in. In fact, both have offered plans that would add to the costs. Trump would end taxes on Social Security benefits. Harris would expand the Earned Income Tax Credit for lower-income workers and extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that are due to expire, among other proposals.
The data help explain why. Though counties that rely significantly on government spending tend to be small, they are still home to nearly 22% of the U.S. population.
Counties at least 25 Percent Dependent on Government Aid
In 2000 there were about 300 countries dependent on Government assistance. Now there are nearly 2,000.
Battleground States
Many of the counties that rely heavily on government safety-net and social-program money have this in common: They are clustered in the battleground states that will decide the presidential election.
About 70% of counties in Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina are significantly reliant on the government income. So are nearly 60% of counties in Pennsylvania. In Arizona, 13 of the 15 counties are heavily reliant on safety-net income.
Measured another way, more than 44% of Michiganders live in counties that are significantly reliant on the government programs. In Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, more than a third of the populations live in such counties.
Spending on these programs has outpaced the income people earn from other sources, the EIG analysis shows. Meanwhile, pressure from a graying population won’t let up: By 2060, nearly a quarter of the U.S. will be at least 65, the Census Bureau projects.
Wow.
And Trump thinks Tariffs will help. All Tariffs will so is raise prices.
For discussion, please see Trump Claims Tariffs Will Reduce the Trade Deficit. Let’s Fact Check.
I will have a second article on tariffs and price impacts later this week.
Also see Ridiculous Answers from Harris and Trump Regarding Food Costs
And if the pictures were to include subsidies for agriculture, oil & gas production, mining, rahnching, lumbering, fishing, manufacturing, and all the other business subsidiens, I imagine he map would be entirely filled in. That would be a more complete view of subsidies.
I do not consider Social Security and Medicare to be “government aid” given the way that they have long been advertised and funded. It’s not my problem that the government looted the iron clad lock box that the trust fund was in, and made the payouts unsustainable.
If they are giving it away, take it.
Obamacare was a major giveaway that made everything in healthcare cost more prices ballooned up while the industry got top heavy in regulation and administrators. Goverment blames it on the insurance the industry, people are afraid to blame our government for the very mess they created. They want treatment but don’t want to pay for it. Costs have gone so high nobody can. Example: $9k for a colonoscopy.
This is a great example of you get what you vote for. If you like your Dr. you can keep your Dr……..Obama didn’t tell you it would cost you $$$$$$$$$$$$
Mish, one thing I noticed from my line of work……When Covid hit, the first ones to apply for PPP loans, EIDL (SBA loan) and State unemployment were all Trump voters.
Apparently big government is ok some of the time.
Please post link where you received this information from.
Don’t hold your breath. These hit & runners never return to the scene of the crime.
Is it considered reliance on government if you supposedly funded the programs during your time working?
According to this article, yes, if it accounts for more than 25% (which seems reasonable to me) of your county’s TOTAL income – including for those people there working and receiving zero assistance
And MANY commenters here have criticized the “aid” moniker, but a lot of them need an economics lesson
Much of this is direct aid in the form of EBT food assistance and Medicaid – poor people’s insurance payments (so not just for the elderly, but for the poor). Check the unemployment and poverty rates for those red counties compared to each state’s major cities; it is NOT just about where the elderly live (no matter how many commenters here opine)
And most of the rest of it is for government/socialized insurance programs (and economists generally call that “aid” because you can’t find it easily or at all in the private market). Social Security is socialized insurance. If you work from age 20 to 60, “funding yourself” in your and others’ language with SS payments, but die at 60, you get $0 back from SS (so it’s not “your money”). But alternatively, if you start taking SS at 65 and live to 100, the US government will send you monthly “insurance aid” for 35 years. Same payment into the system, and your payback ranges from $0 to massive (that’s socialized insurance, not your payback).
And it’s basically like car insurance. Specific premiums paid in. No wreck – no payments. Big wreck – big payments. The only difference here is that type of SS insurance for living a long time and needing monthly living expenses is not available in the market. And if you wanted to self-fund an annuity that would pay you such large monthly payments for 35 years, it would be uber costly (and these citizens of the article’s red counties could not afford that on average – thus the SS program’s existence).
The unemployment insurance aid also applicable in this WSJ study is similar. Your employer pays into that insurance fund. You get fired; you get a monthly check for quite awhile. Try to buy that in the private insurance market; won’t happen. But if you don’t get fired, no payment – thus another socialized insurance program.
And Medicare is definitely a socialized insurance program. If you retired from work at 70 and tried to buy medical insurance for yourself at that point in the private market; forget about a reasonable insurance coverage. No private company could profitably provide that with what they know is coming, at insurance premiums you could actually afford monthly to give them a profit. So the government makes you pay for it as you work; and it’s still not “your money”. If you die at age 55 after years of working, you and your heirs get squat because it was old-age health insurance. But if you reach age 65, and have heavy medical problems for the next 35 years, welcome to an insurance paradise where the rest of us are heavily subsidizing your individual care.
So again, since you could not get much of this coverage for socialized insurance without government help, that’s why it is referred to as “aid”.
And the overall point of the WSJ analysis was that ALL OF US get the benefits of this socialized insurance, but those receiving the MOST (as a percentage of total population income) are Republicans – and growing A LOT over the past 25 years. But look at the party platform – and many of the comments here, and you’d think these right-leaning citizens were being robbed.
There’s your free economics less for the day
Or the takeaway could be that more republican workers had jobs/higher paying jobs that paid into SS and thus get more benefits. SS was not intended to be a hand out…
Sure, theoretically. But realistically, check the poverty rates and low per capita incomes for those same counties in the WSJ article with high “aid”. They are not full of higher earners – on average. They are just statistics.
And did I call it a “hand out”? Or did I say SS is a socialized insurance program? But since you brought it up, yes from early in its history, the program has been highly progressive. Low income “earners” (not non-working people) get relatively more benefits than what they paid in, compared to higher earners. If it makes it easier to stomach, you can call it a “hand up” (or aid)?
So Social Security is a government mandated annuity, just like the ones sold by private companies, in its most basic form?
Yes and no
Yes, it is an annuity with set payments (with COLA increases annually) that you start getting upon legal “entitlement” (reaching a certain age)
Also no, because as I wrote some about above, it’s not the exact same as a private annuity. Every annuity is a contractual arrangement you make with a private company so they all differ. But usually, many/most private annuities are payments for a set number of years (and not based upon how long you live which makes SS more of an insurance program). And definitely most private annuities don’t pay more (on a relative basis) back to those who pay in less (like SS does for aid reasons).
I think this is why many people have different opinions on SS. If you make a lot, you don’t worry as much about future money needs (or need as much insurance), and think you could make more privately with your own investments, so you don’t want to pay into that system. You want to “take care of yourself”. But for most others nearly or already on SS, you can’t imagine (though many won’t say it out loud) having invested enough over time on your own without SS taxation to provide the relatively huge amounts you would need and currently get through SS if you live well past your retirement age. And the majority of us are getting a good deal on our SS payments vs. contributions since the program is progressive. Those people will kill to keep their SS program – thus the political pandering
Generally if you are fired, no unemployment bennys
Not true
I don’t think you’ll find a lot or even “MOST” of either party’s voters are opposed to the basic concepts of Medicare and Social Security other than how some of its monies are used to fund other government programs and unlike a private insurance company no profits are yielded back to the program (policy) or the insurer (the federal government). You did a fine analysis of the issue until the end when you chose to turn it into a political diatribe against one party and its voters. You can loose a lot of friends and listeners that way but I’m thinking you’re not in this educate but rather alienate and denigrate. That’s a shame.
they left out the counties of israel and ukraine and south korea and japan and germany and italy……………
Privatize the profits, socialize the costs…USA capitalism…it’s how we do corruption. The outrageous cost of the US health system us how we do corruption. The MIC is how we do corruption. Selling manufacturing base to China for cheap labor is how we do corruption.
The path to authoritarian one-party rule and socialism/communism:
-Get voters and local governments dependent on FINANCIAL aid from central government, and use open borders to get more poor people and localities to be more dependent. When that is not enough…
-Get voters dependent on central government for their HEALTHARE (ObamaCare). When that is not enough…
-Take away 2A rights to self defense, while importing and releasing criminals, to make voters dependent on government for all of their SAFETY and SECURITY. (MA Gov. Maura Healey is pushing this in MA right now, making disarming the public an ’emergency’. And authoritarian rule is why.)
Both sides are going to spend like crazy so it really becomes an ideological question. People who work hard and pay into social security are more likely to vote for the guy that will eliminate taxes on social security. Those with low/no income and/or no healthcare are more likely to vote for the party that helps them the most.
So both groups are most likely to vote for the party that helps them the most.
Yup. Politics 101.
“In 2000 there were about 300 countries dependent on Government assistance.” COUNTIES.
Actually pretty accurate or at least directionally correct. Most countries get assistance from the US government
israel wouldn’t exist if NOT for amerikan using them as a pawn and testing site for MIC firecrackers. they are a desperate people and we take advantage of them…………imho.
That’s a very interesting chart. Both social security and Medicare are highly progressive, i.e. redistribute resources to lower incomes. The payback for this redistribution from blue to red counties is to support exceedingly stupid MAGA policies that will reduce the pie available for all of us.
Americans eat too much pie already.
Yes, way too much humble piefor the bottom 90% since ‘73
The wealthy seem to be accumulating wealth faster than ever…. wonder where that wealth comes from?
From the businesses the build and the things they invest in? Or are you looking for the socialist/communist answer…it was expropriated from the workers?
Not “expropriate”, but exploit. They exploit the ability of labor to create more value than it requires to reproduce labor. Only the ignorant and those blinded by capitalist propaganda don’t understand that fact. Value only comes from human labor, in the case of capitalism, from the working class, working farmers, and small producers.
And just who puts the labor to use? Not much good being available if there’s no work for you. This is the chicken and the egg.
The Fed pumping the market with printed money.
Asset appreciation.
Would be interesting to see the chart above showing counties with significant government assistance, except taking county population size into account. Some counties have millions of residents; others have only hundreds of residents; so a counting each county the same is simplistic.
Subtract the excessive monetary and fiscal government spending from the economy and how much “real growth” has been achieved, other than a transfer of wealth.
There would likely be negative growth. That excessive spending ends up in people’s pockets and spent on products from companies capable of using it to perform real growth. The question is without that income from excessive spending, would companies be willing to grow?. Would there be enough profitable investments to adequately employ the population? If not, what then?
The day is not complete without mocking the green grooooopies (e.g. Jeff Green)
How Schleswig-Holstein sold their reliable diesel ferry for a song, spent 3.3 million Euro for a new emissions-free solar ferry that doesn’t work, & increased carbon emissions on top of it all
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/how-schleswig-holstein-sold-their
Hey Eddy. How about you finally answer my question that you keep dodging.
Will the recent startup of the Matterhorn ppipeline result in increased Permian production over the next year?
Maybe this time you will answer for yourself, rather than linking to out-of-date articles that don’t have anything to do with my question.
I answered it a few times… pipelines do not conjure up oil and refill depleted oil fields.
What they can do is contribute to more rapid depletion rates as they allow for more oil to be conveyed to the market.
Oil production has been flat since 2018 https://ourfiniteworld.com/2024/09/11/crude-oil-extraction-may-be-well-past-peak/
I suppose installing more pipelines and drilling more holes to such the reserves dry faster… could delay the collapse…
However it is my understanding that they are pumping as fast as they possibly can… they have drilled the living daylights out of the Permian and other shale plays…
So I have my reservations about adding pipelines to increase the volume of oil reaching the market.
I am just waiting on the oil flow to drop off from the peak … and the collapse that will follow.
The bucket listing continues… will head to Japan again for a month long trip this month… planning an extended ski trip there in mid Jan as well.
I’ll be sure to think of you trading your tar sands stocks… while I am enjoying the last bit of civilization
Hahahahaha! Why would you ever think that a pipeline is built to put oil and gas INTO a field. A pipeline is built to take oil and gas AWAY from a field.
More pipelines, mean more oil and gas can be produced and taken AWAY from the Permian. And several more new pipelines are planned over the next 3 years.
Now, why do YOU think that these pipelines are being built if Permian production is plummeting (as you keep incorrectly stating )?
And why do you keep referencing articles about peak “conventional” oil, when we are discussing the “unconventional” shale oil and gas in the Permian?
Face it. Permian production is not plummeting anytime soon. Though I don’t expect large increases in production either, particularly since these oil prices do not provide much incentive for that.
Hahahaha… you apparently did not read my post … or perhaps you are dyslexic… I said adding pipelines do NOT add reserves but they can draw down reserves faster… DUH…
More pipelines does not mean there is more oil and gas to deplete…
Rather when you are peaked on oil… what the pipelines can do is help delay the collapse by sucking what remains faster…
DUH
Lol!
“adding pipelines do NOT add reserves but they can draw down reserves faster”
Which would mean increased production; right?
You are really, really close here.
You can do it!
Drawing down reserves faster does not increase production. It only changes the timeline of when that production is produced. If anything getting the wells to produce at too fast a rate can lead to problems like stranded reserves which means less produced overall when the wells are capped.
Still can’t bring yourself to say Permian production is going up?
Let’s try another way:
Here is Permian oil production for the first 6 months of 2024.
Permian 2024 production by month:
Jan: 5.978 mbpd
Feb: 6.158 mbpd
Mar: 6.152 mbpd
Apr: 6.157 mbpd
May: 6.179 mbpd
Jun: 6.187 mbpd
Is Permian production increasing or decreasing?
“ However it is my understanding that they are pumping as fast as they possibly can… they have drilled the living daylights out of the Permian and other shale plays…”
Nope. They have been holding back on Permian drilling until new pipelines were built to take away more production.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=62884
I have read stories about school districts and transit districts which have replaced reliable diesel buses with unreliable electric buses.
Thanks for posting this Mish. It makes me want to vote for the first time ever. For Trump. He has promised to eliminate my income taxes (which are substantial) and replace them with tariffs. Then I wouldn’t have to keep supporting these red state socialist libtards who are all sucking on the government teat.
If you plan your purchases carefully, and avoid the tariffed stuff — you’ll come out ahead 🙂
I am glad you are going to vote. I suggest you to read the full article, more carefully than what Mish chosen to show. Majority of those” red state socialist” are counted as getting government support because of Social Security and MediCare. Seems like you are counting on not paying taxes on your Social Security payments (that’s what Mr. Trump promised, but as a copy cat Harris said she will do that as well, so you can vote for either if that’s your only voting “issue” but please vote but educate yourself first) It is amazing to me people don’t realize they are part of the subject but selfishly do not want to pay their share of the burden.
Lol! Sorry. I was being sarcastic. I would never waste my time voting. And I would never believe that Trump would eliminate my income taxes. And I certainly don’t mind paying my “fair share”. But by all means, you go ahead and vote for whoever you want to vote for.
PapaD,
I strongly encourage you to vote for whomever you feel like is the best candidate. I know it might have been a while since you exercised this right, but this is the year. Forget about personalities, etc and vote based on which of these two very divergent paths you think is better for your pocketbook and your freedoms:
Harris: Bigger government, higher taxes, more censorship, support of foreign wars, more illegals, more crime & drugs
Trump: Smaller government, lower taxes, less censorship, less American intervention overseas, less illegals, less crime & drugs
Best regards
Good try. But no thanks.
On the other hand, if I told you that Trump was a no go, and I was debating between voting for Harris or not voting at all, would you still encourage me to vote?
Yes
Yes, sir! Absolutely! It’s your vote and, IMHO, I encourage you to do so no matter whom you support.
It’s a fundamental right that is under attack.
Never in the history of the United States of America has a presidential candidate denied the results of an election even after full recounts and adjudication, except for Donald Trump. Why is that? Because every candidate understands that doing so places the nation in jeopardy by dividing the population and causing citizens to call into question the very institutions that the Founding Fathers created. It creates people calling for things like civil war and the destruction of basic institutions of law and jurisprudence. Every candidate in the history of our great nation has put the United States of America before their own personal ambitions for this reason. Except for Donald Trump. Regardless of the stupidities of some of Harris’s policies, no one who calls themselves a patriot or conservative could vote for the fundamental evil that is Donald J. Trump.
Election corruption.
CBS’s Leslie Stahl said to Trump, that the Hunter Biden laptop could not be verified, “because it can’t.” It was verified. Google, Facebook, Twitter, meddled in our election in 2020. Election corruption.
Democrats are corrupting our basic institutions. Lawfare is not justice. Impeaching a president after a legal phone call is congressional corruption.
A patriot would not vote for a Marxist. It is the Democrats who want to fundamentally change America. Censorship is anti democratic and anti American. Kerry just said the First Amendment stands in their way of being able to govern. No, it stands in the way of government tyranny, which is why it exists as a right of the people and why Democrats want to get rid of it and other Constitutional rights of the people.
The recounting was done away from the public eye and that was a problem for me. Remember when Trump won the first time and Jean Stein offer Hillary Clinton her help if she would fund the recounting of votes in the swing states? No one complained then, why do people like you complain about Trump trying his best to get the votes recounted. Do we even know the results from Arizona? Did not, Al Gore get a recount, though it took months?
They aren’t worth minimum wage.
We need real leadership and what better leadership than a potential VP giving the middle finger to a college student at a football game? We deserve this man. The sooner we get to communism the sooner this thing can die and we can start over with a new Republic.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/ReRhy53bSGw
Voting confirms that you have been played. It is all FAKE. https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/what-if/
Another excellent post Mish showcasing socialist reality vs “self-sufficient” fantasy.
Reality – The vast majority 80% of tax revenue comes from 20% of a state, usually the county with the largest city or two and the rest are leeches.
Fantasy – The “rustic rural self-made independent macho” anti-government renaissance man. Uh, sorry, you’re a rural leech that can’t afford to pay for your own utilities (electricity, water, sewer) or roads without being heavily subsidized by your large city/county via state taxation theft.
For anyone that doubts the WSJ you can search for your state’s tax revenue at the state comptroller’s office and do the math yourself. DATA! DATA! DATA! Below is a link to Texas comptroller. I looked up the numbers for an investment portfolio project, 50% of ALL tax revenue comes from one county: Harris (Houston). The next 30% comes from Dallas, Austin/San Antonio. The rest are leeches that don’t produce squat but take a whole lot of money for schools, roads, bridges, etc.
https://comptroller.texas.gov/transparency/local/quarterly-report/stxqtr01.php
But Trump is finally aligning with his base in offering more socialist handouts to the leeches, they don’t hide it any more. I wonder why the WSJ is just now getting around to reporting on this when it’s been known for centuries.
And the problem will only get worse, wait till 2030 when all the boomers hit 65 and need their hips or knees replaced and their arteries de-clogged. God help us all.
To be fair, companies pay taxes in the county where their HQ is. Not necessarily where they are doing the actual business that generates the revenue. That’s why Harris county (Houston) shows massive tax because that’s where corporate HQ’s are. Same with Dallas, Austin etc.
You’d have to get a different tax base that excluded business tax revenue to make it make sense in terms of personal income tax revenue.
“To be fair, companies pay taxes in the county where their HQ is.”
WTF? No, the taxes are paid at the point of sale in the county they are made and coded as such otherwise it would ALL be in Houston because that’s where most corporate HQs are located. Every local city and county wants their cut asap.
And personal income tax revenue is going to be highest in those same cities and counties because that’s where the highest paid people are not in rural counties. Texas doesn’t have a state income tax so the point is mute anyway.
Point of sale is still misleading. Sure, for say a convenience store where you show in person and buy something it’s obvious it all took place in the store. But if you are say in a county and make sales to people outside the county (ie ship goods / services to them) it registers in the business location, not at the point where the customer buys and takes possession or gets a service.
For example do you think Netflix is really reporting sales (and thus business revenue) in every county in the USA so that every county is getting some boost to revenue via Netflix?
This is the whole crux of Apple having all that offshore cash via Ireland with lower corporate taxes that everyone is in an uproar about.
“For example do you think Netflix is really reporting sales (and thus business revenue) in every county in the USA so that every county is getting some boost to revenue via Netflix?”
Yes, that’s exactly how it works for sales tax purposes. Netflix charges tax based on the county/city tax rate because every city/county is different.
Here you go.
https://www.salestaxhandbook.com/texas/rates
And then you throw in apple and offshore stuff and yet don’t understand what offshore is about and I don’t have time to explain it to you but Ireland companies exist to avoid paying offshore taxes not US taxes. Apple recently lost a court case in the EU regarding Ireland tax and had to cough up $4 billion in taxes, go look it up.
Somewhat a bit of a fallacy, huh? The Republicans in North Carolina today who are now screaming and crying that the government that they hate isnt coming fast enough and with more money to replace their houses and businesses. We democrats have our hypocrisies and lying nonsense, but the Repubs in the rural countryside who live off of free government food stamps and Medicaid really takes the cake.
What a horse’s ass comment, Scott. Living off of free government food stamps in a country intentionally being de-industrialized on the altar of Climate Scamsterism.
I calls them as I sees them. Including the shop owner on NBC tonight in N Carolina who you could just tell is waiting for his fat awful government check.
What?
Industrialization and manufacturing have been declining as a percentage of the US workforce for many decades, under both Republican and Democrat administrations. Talk to the US consumers who voluntarily choose to purchase such goods abroad at cheaper prices; it’s not new and not about climate change LOL
Thinking that you’re ignoring the rush to the intentional final de-industrialization nails going into the coffins, sheesh. Here they give them so many wonderful names. “Pathway to 2030”, “Goals 2040”, “Vision 2050”. Get the people off the rural lands, push them into stack and pack little prison cities. Every leftist policy in Oregon reeks of “You wIll own Nothing, You Will DO nothing…you will GO nowhere (except on public transit or bike) but you will be happy”. Wait a minute…we’re Democrats in control of Oregon…WE’LL be happy, YOU’ll need to send us more taxes.
Mish, I work in two of those dependent counties, Jackson and Josephine County Oregon. A major contributing factor to the dependency has been federal forest and environmental policy. More than half the state is fed-managed. Logging was destroyed over an enviro lie. (Spotted Owl) Then the 1995 WIldfire Management Policy was enacted. In Effect “Let It Burn”. Since the forest keeps growing and it won’t get cut, burn it for land management purposes, poison the people’s lungs, and make the forest a BURDEN on the people. In more sensible times the land made our area prosperous with logging proceeds enriching our county governments. Now it’s all transfer payments. This was a CHOICE, not an accident, not all but mostly driven by leftist environmentalist NGO’s. Now the next shoe to drop is Gang Green “Climate Friendly Equitable Communities”. (Stack and Pack cities)
For three decades the Democrats have waged economic warfare against the countryside. Not just logging but mining is largely shutdown. Ranching has been evermore hamstrung, and irrigation dams are being torn out.
Add in the population getting older and there is nothing surprising about it. Rewilding isn’t in the news much but it’s still policy on the political left.
I want to rewild their ass with cougars and bears in THEIR gated communities. WIldlife “Equityyyyyyyyy”.
Thanks for the stats and graphs, Mish. Good luck with the haters!
It seems apparent that repubs will be more generous to the poor than dems.
yes !
This map seems much more like a distribution of older people in the rural areas and younger people in the trendy big cities and flashy coasts than anything else to me.
yeap, work in an urban area where the amount$ are higher, retire to a low-property-tax, low-sales tax suburban or rural area with a low cost of living…
I would have to agree!
The Party for “The People” will be better for the people.
The Party for “The Elites” will be far worse for “The People”
The main thing this shows me is how off base Paul freaking Ryan (POS) was (and why Romney/Ryan deserved to get spanked) with his Ayn Randian wet dream of wide open borders and a total elimination of the social safety net. This country has millions of people who are disabled, mentally ill, elderly and infirm and – to be blunt – stupid and incapable of doing much more than pushing a mop. I’d rather subsidize their health care – and their lives in general – than spend hundreds of billions on the Ukraine where we’ve gotten over 1/2 million people (mostly Ukrainians) killed solely to “weaken Russia”. We could save a few hundred billion dollars a year (on budget and off budget) if we weren’t trying to force every country in the world to bend to our “rules-based order”. (We make the rules and you follow the orders.). Tariffs may be inflationary, but less than the medical-insurance conspiracy that uses overblown, fake bills to scare people into having to pay outrageous premiums for health insurance that covers little. Tariffs may not be a panacea, but neither is forswearing tariffs the solution to everything.
Last 4 Years: We could save a few hundred billion dollars a year (on budget and off budget) if we weren’t trying to force every country in the world to bend to our “rules-based order”
Next 4 Years: Depends if we Go: R or Go: D. Let’s hope for R or we do this All Over Again for The Next 4 Years…
The majority is dependent on gov benefits. It is the natural outcome of over 5 decades of inflation. Dependency will increase fast over the next few years too.
Not mathematically possible. Total government spending as a share of GDP is pretty much where it’s always been.
If u lose double your bets. Republicans voters suck the gov in the swing states. The Biden administration increased US gov debt in order buy voters in Trumpland in a Martingale betting strategy. Western PA is one of the privileged Trump’s country which gets a lot of attention from both Trump and Kamala/ Biden. If Kamala/Biden wins they will get out of the casino table and stop betting. They will punish retired boomers and gen X with inflation, along with shingle mums and the poor.
Somewhat misreading. Many of the red counties have very small populations versus a few of the blue counties with very large populations.
yes !
LOL, it’s not ‘misleading’; you just don’t like what Mish and the WSJ have pointed out
Generally, those same blue counties have MANY high earners paying the majority of the federal taxes sent out for aid. So even if more dollars are going to those city locations – due to populations, those citizens are paying for everyone in those cities and enough to send to the smaller rural areas which are heavily dependent upon them.
I don’t shame anyone taking part in an eligible aid program; that’s what it’s there for. But it’s crazy when so many here want to assume these statistics are ‘fake’. Do you want the aid? No skin off my nose. But how about a simple ‘thank you’ to those paying large amounts of taxes and not getting that aid? Instead of posting about how the Democrats only want to suck votes from those getting the government largesse. LOL
No, it’s misleading, on at least 3 levels. See my original comment below.
Social Security is “government aid”? After paying into it for over three decades I don’t consider getting my money back “aid” when I finally get it. I also don’t have a choice of not taking Medicare at 65, so I also don’t see how that is called “aid”.
So this whole premise is misleading, plus as noted in another comment counties can be really small or really huge, depending on the state, so this data is basically a big mess and typical of using misinfo to score some sort of political point.
As for tariffs, the assumption is they allow competitors to make the product in the US, which employs US workers. Mish takes the line that cheap items from China when everyone is unemployed is better than having more expensive items, but then everyone has job. I thought the same thing as Mish before NAFTA, but Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound” was exactly right, and I watched millions of jobs being offshored in my lifetime.
SS is part of transfer money.
Yes, it is aid, or at least transfers. You are not presumably providing any current good or service to the federal government but you’re receiving a check.
I don’t think that’s a big deal. The vast majority of us will get a SS check eventually, so we’re all in the same boat. But the point here is that a large number of people (and their surrounding county communities where they spend the majority of that money) get a LARGE percentage of their money from this federal aid.
In the last 25 years, the number of Democratic counties receiving these large percentages (from Mish’s included chart) is nearly the same. But the huge increase in people and counties receiving such aid have voted Republican for the last 25 years, not just under Trump. I thought the Republican agenda over this time period was supposed to be more about boot-strap people than the Democrats?
If I give you hundreds of thousands over 35 years, then you start paying it back … it’s still not AID.
You can call it a hot grilled cheese sandwich, if it makes it easier to swallow
Plenty of high-earning people have paid hundreds of thousands in all kinds of federal taxes and received very few, if any direct payments from the federal government. And if they die before age 62, they get no aid from SS. Why does this bother you so much? Just take your ‘fair share’
Both social security and Medicare are typical socialist programs. Nothing wrong with that if you are socialist like Trump.
Social Security and Medicare are earned benefits although they have a progressive aspect. SS benefits are relatively higher for lower wage than higher wage earners. Medicare is more progressive with unlimited taxation and income based premiums. 85% of SS benefits are taxed beyond relatively small thresholds. Working seniors still must pay SS and Medicare payroll taxes. Excess SS and Medicare payroll taxes were spent decades ago to support lower deficits and more spending.
The focus should be on other programs, not SS and Medicare except for Democrat desires for increased spending in both programs. Here are programs that deserve attention for reduced spending if government spending must be limited.
F Trump for saying this administration has been lackadaisical regarding aid to the hurricane victims
As this thread highlights what about THE AMERICAN PEOPLE steppng up and aid your fellow Americans???
What – are they going to build their own roads? There’s unlimited money for cokehead Zelenskyyyyy and ethnic-cleanser Netanyahu. They always find money for subsidies for EV’s. Billions for a charging network that’s installed 8 chargers, but when heritage Americans are flooded out, it’s pick yourself up by your bootstraps, crackers!
Well, there goes the wacko’s dream of civil war. Most of their states appear to be on the dole. I am much less worried now.
This is exactly the sort of misinformed knee-jerk response that the “by county” data is intended to evoke. Congratulations, you’ve been had!
This is bad.
(The Federal) Government makes very little, and typically is very inefficient when it makes. We can assume that the uncolored counties are paying money to keep the red and blue counties of the map afloat. That and the trend of it is a profound case of Bastiat’s “Everyone attempting to live at the expense of everyone else.” It is not sustainable, and things will get “unpleasant” when it fails.
Looks like MAGA country.
This is exactly the sort of misinformed knee-jerk response that the “by county” data is intended to evoke. Congratulations, you’ve been had!
Check the reviews on WSJ for this article. You will realize that as a rule WSJ is propaganda or fake news or a combination
Yes, of course it’s propaganda. That is, until you listen to the NY Times, the Wash Post, MSNBC, CNN, LA Times, Sac Bee – they all deliver the “truth” as news. Know why the newspapers have gotten thinner? They only print one side of the story. The liberal Dem side.
A lot of the credit for making newspapers thinner also needs to go to Craig Newmark and his web site Craigslist. 40 years ago if you were looking for a roommate or trying to sell your used car, you might run a 2 line ad in the Sunday want ads for $20. Now you can run it for free on Craigslist.
Keeping birds as pets has gone way-down, hence less demand for newspapers
Yeah, right, like the WSJ is a left-leaning ‘liberal rag’ LOL
It’s maddening. The SS issue could have been fixed years ago with a minor tweak to retirement age and de minimus changes in FICA rates without cutting benefits. Now we’re looking at cutting benefits, all because of a manufactured crisis. It was all foreseeable and easily corrected. We traded easy solutions earlier for hard choices later. Kind of the American way.
While I agree … “a minot tweak to retirement age” had people screaming in the streets all of Europe and would do the same here. Cutting benefits … same thing. My parents raised me to be self-sufficient and save for retirement, so now that I’ll be paying tax (a second time) on my SS benefits … or getting the benefits later or not getting the benefits at all … I’ll get by. Most Americans were not raised with that ethic.
The benefit is indexed to inflation. A similarly simple solution would be if the retirement age is indexed to median life expectancy for each birth year.
Then there’s nothing to fight about, and everyone knows what to expect. The vast majority will be happy if in fact the nation delivers longer life expectancies, and will understand that we all have to carry our weight before we can be taken care of in our old age.
Communist Dream
Displaying this type of information by counties is deeply misleading. Counties are not standardized units of either land or population. WSJ should be ashamed for not also showing the counts by population.
If you look at, say, a recent Presidential (or Congressional) vote map “by county”, you’ll wonder why Congress and the White House are not as red as the map!
It’s because population is heavily concentrated in a few counties.
There’s a second layer of misinformation going on as well – people who are government aid recipients can be receiving that aid from the state, county or local level, not necessarily federal.
Then we get to the third layer: what counts as aid, exactly, and how do you add it up? There are any number of indirect payment or assistance schemes that reward some parts of a state, county, etc. vs. the others. A really obvious one is funding for roads and other infrastructure, but once you dive in you see that the list of government-sponsored preferences and benefits goes on and on…
Additionally, all kinds of govt incentives are not counted in these numbers, maybe in wrong. Aren’t incentives on solar and electric cars not aid? Additionally, social security is a retirement program that is paid into. I don’t know if we can call that aid.
I agree about SS being a retirement program. And Medicare recipients pay premiums.
Did you read the WSJ article Mish linked or just start typing your angry response (presumably because you don’t like the implied outcome)
Why does population matter so much? Regardless of population, they are getting a lot of aid and voting a specific way. There are other charts in the article (if you read it) that tell some more state population percentages in those counties (WV and MS at 70% of the state pop., battleground states of MI, AZ, PA, NC and GA at 30-45% of the state population). All heavily reliant on aid.
BTW, look at the maps. In all those states with heavy aid assistance, the areas without significant aid are the major cities. I hear so many online talk about the inner city residents taking so much government largesse. The cities in total are not heavily reliant on aid; these ‘smaller’ counties are.
And about 70% of the total aid funding is coming from the federal government. That’s important because those counties are getting a lot from the federal government (aka – the rest of us), but the majority voted for Trump. If those people like the benefits and that’s why they are voting for Trump, good for them. If instead they are arguing online that the ‘government is taking their life and lifestyle away’ and so voting for Trump, they should stop being a hypocrite and return the aid.
And the WSJ article says where the aid formulation comes from. It’s direct aid to specific people, not military bases or roads which benefit everyone.
Did you read the article? It’s literally a map of an aging population where social security and medicare represent the majority of federal outlays. It’s possible for inflation to be destroying their lifestyle at the same time they’re dependent on an income from a program they paid into for 40 years. You can look up a map of median age by county. It will tell you the same thing. It’s not surprising that a working age population isn’t dependent on government aid.
Of course, I read it; that’s why I addressed much of the BS put forth by ‘Wisdom’ Seeker
You are the one missing the point of the article. Of course, older people are entitled to the SS payments – that’s why they are called ‘entitlement’ payments under the statutory SS program.
But what you aren’t addressing – from the article – is how this ‘earned’ money is such a high percentage of the available income for Republican-voting counties. How badly off would these citizen voters – and their neighbors – be if SS or other such government programs were not in place, or suddenly cut under Republicans wanting to ‘decrease government’? They would be in horrible shape, yet so many of them moan incessantly about government killing them LOL
And inflation is not “destroying the lifestyle” of these current aid recipients. Your SS check is adjusted for inflation annually – and the rest of us will probably lose out in the future accordingly when fewer SS dollars are left over for our own future checks. You’re welcome
I don’t have a dog in the party fight as I believe the whole system is a dialectic. That being said, many that are in favor of decreased government- including me- are thinking of terms of reduction of military, reduction of foreign aid, reduction in services for illegal immigrants, etc…
I don’t normally read mainstream media articles because the factual and conceptual errors drive me absolutely nuts. I read this one. I stand behind my critique.
As a starting point, “Government Aid” is a loaded and incorrect term for most of the payments discussed in the article. The WSJ isn’t talking about all the ways that government impacts people’s well-being, only a small portion. So the data are “not even wrong”, they’re “digging in the wrong place”, they’re not getting the central point.
For instance, the vast majority of the money discussed in the article comes from from calling social security and medicare payments and veterans benefits “aid”. Those are not need-based aid, though, they are social-contract programs for which people made tax payments and/or risked their lives for years, and expect a return on the investment. They are not welfare assistance to the never-very-productive poor, which is what “Government Aid” usually means.
Note that all 3 of those are programs where people lived in one place while earning the benefits, but they might choose to relocate and collect their benefits in a different place. Tagging the payments by location is absolutely irrelevant.
More deeply, over the past 50 years the “increase in social security and medicare payouts” (I refuse to call those “Aid”) is simply driven by the demographics of aging. One can quickly explain nearly every piece of “data” in the article with one comment: Americans are on average older now than 50 years ago. But that doesn’t attract eyeballs to pay advertisers, so WSJ just had to make it politically charged by tossing in “red vs blue”.
As for the importance of population: buried in the article is a critical fact- only a small fraction of the population is receiving these benefits. The map, and the “Government Aid” fake description of the data, makes it look like 80% of the whole country is welfare-dependent and they all live in red states. In reality only 22% of the nation’s population lives in any county that scored over 25% on the WSJ’s “fake aid dependency” metric. The truth is that a relatively small elderly population is receiving social security and medicare and veteran’s benefits, a much smaller amount of money is going to a variety of other programs, and most of the recipients live in cities just like everyone else. They’re just a smaller proportion of the population within cities.
And yes, they were only counting specific benefits, but the “everything else” really matters. The government’s role is much much larger than simply redirecting Federal tax payments to beneficiaries. State and local programs are also important. By focusing only on a few easy-to-account-for programs, and omitting everything else, the WSJ authors are not seeing the big picture.
I could go on and on …
Well said, Wisdom Seeker. The WSJ article is nothing more than apologetics for the “Misalocation or Resources Industrial Complex” which retired people try and escape by moving to nicer rural areas.
“Misalocation of Resources Industrial Complex “