Posted on 07/10/2012 5:49:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
June brought the perfect encapsulation of the Obama economy: More Americans signed up for disability benefits than got jobs. According to government statistics, 80,000 Americans found work last month, while 85,000 dropped out of the labor force altogether to collect Social Security Disability payments.
It is possible that an unusual number of Americans have become disabled during President Obama's tenure -- but if so, what does that say about the virtues of Obamacare? In any case, though, Obama promised that unemployment would not top 8 percent if we passed the stimulus law -- and though he predicted that the unemployment rate would be at 5.6 percent today, the private economy itself is quite disabled under this leadership.
There are very few jobs on offer. People are accordingly going where the money is. From the beginning of the recovery in June 2009, more Americans have joined the ranks of the disabled (3.1 million) than have found jobs (2.6 million). Record numbers have also filed for unemployment insurance, welfare benefits and food stamps, which 1 in 7 Americans now receive.
The federal government has so many welfare programs that a top official of the Government Accountability Office couldn't even provide a fixed number to a House oversight committee, nor would Patricia Dalton "hazard a guess" as to what percentage of these programs is accomplishing the purposes for which they were created. What is not in doubt is the increase in funding President Obama has requested for welfare -- 42 percent over 2008 levels.
Since the administration believes unemployment insurance to be the best way to expand the economy, it isn't surprising to find that the food stamp program, or SNAP as it's now called, is also advertising for more "customers." The SNAP website encourages local offices to be creative about finding more beneficiaries. "Throw a Great Party. Host social events where people mix and mingle. Make it fun by having activities, games, food, and entertainment, and provide information about SNAP." The Daily Caller reports that SNAP is also running radio ads (cost to you: about $3 million) to encourage greater participation in North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, California, Texas and New York.
SNAP, with a touching faith in the Keynesian multiplier, explains, "Every $5 in new SNAP benefits generates $9.20 in additional community spending. If the national participation rate rose five percentage points ... $2.5 billion total in new economic activity would be generated nationwide." Right.
The president is fond of saying, regarding the Republican Party's economic philosophy, "We tried that, and it didn't work." Obama never acknowledges that his economic philosophy -- enthusiastically enacted by a Democrat-dominated Congress in 2009, not only has failed but also makes no sense. By what logic does adding record numbers of people to the welfare rolls aid the economy? Fewer and fewer Americans are earning the money from which these expanded benefits are to be paid. Though the president predicted a strong recovery by 2010, he now claims that the poor economy is still somehow George Bush's fault, all the while still maintaining that things are "moving in the right direction," which, presumably, must not be Bush's doing.
There are only a couple of nongovernmental sectors that the president routinely praises and endorses -- and you can't really call them private, because both have received generous taxpayer subsidies: the high-speed rail and "green jobs." In California, the feds have partnered with bankrupt Sacramento to begin building a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco. In a survey of potential customers, 69 percent said they would "never" or "hardly ever" use such a train. No matter, they will soon break ground for the first leg of the system that will traverse the 130 miles from Madera to Bakersfield. From, as a wit noted, "where nobody lives to where nobody wants to go."
The "five million" green jobs President Obama promised, and toward which he shoveled $25 billion in stimulus funds, have obviously not materialized. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been working overtime to reclassify existing jobs as "green." As Rep. Darrell Issa discovered, "There are 33 times as many so-called green jobs in the septic tank and portable toilet servicing industry as there are in solar energy and utility areas. More than 160,000 of these green jobs are related to school bus drivers." A plumber who installs a low-flow toilet becomes a "green" plumber. In some cases, government claims of new green jobs were based only on unaudited claims found in industry press releases.
Mysteriously, these boondoggles, subsidies, transfer payments and trains to nowhere haven't boosted the economy. It must be the dead hand of George W. Bush.
0bama disables Americans at a record rate.
GLOBAL VIEW
Updated July 9, 2012, 8:23 p.m. ET
The Entitlement State—and Zombies
How to become a country, or a continent, of democratic serfs.
By BRET STEPHENS
When is an economic crisis more than just an economic crisis? When is it also a political crisis? And when is it something else altogether: social, demographic, institutional, moral, intellectual—in short, civilizational?
The euro zone’s troubles shouldn’t be difficult to understand: Pair overspending governments with over-regulated economies and sooner or later the Continent was bound to lose the confidence of the markets.
Normally, such a crisis could be resolved by slashing corporate and marginal tax rates and red tape in order to encourage investment, enterprise and risk-taking. Instead, European policy makers have pursued every conceivable fix, from serial bailouts to ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303343404577516602768980574.html
Thanks for posting. Excellent.
So much ammo here for the GOP! Is there anyone with guts enough to stand up and repeat it over and over?
DISGUSTING!
What’s new? This is disgusting. Anyone who is on the dole and in the parasitic class should not be allowed to vote while taking. In the longer term, it will be “interesting” when the gravy train runs out...and it will. Get to the range today.
I goofed - Post 5 was meant to thank you.....Thanks - great article.
I heard a positively disgusting radio ad inviting people to get free cell phones.
WTF!!?? ‘Free’??? Really!
How intelligent do you have to be to know that nothing worth a damn is FREE?
SOMEONE is paying! Your FREE thingy is creating DEBT!
“Anybody who has ever been in business, anybody who has ever paid bills, anybody who has ever lived in a serious adult life knows that indebtedness is a killer.” Frank Lautenberg
No problem, it happens and you’re welcome
No representation without taxation. If the takers outnumber the makers, the makers should leave the country. Then the takers can riot in front of the Capitol, as they do in Greece. Obama will be happy that he was the one to bring down The Great Satan. He may even get a mosque named after him in D. C.
In a perverse way, the Baraqqi Depression is actually helping his re-election chances. Just the opposite of what a bad economy traditionally does.
99ers, record food stamps, record disability claims
Lots of locked in votes.
Don’t think we’re at the tipping point yet, but close.
The cartoon leaves out the “body abuse” of male homosexual acts, leading to debilitating contagious disease.
You know that this will be a “favored” condition that will automatically receive approval for treatment from IPAB.
Fourteen-point-three percent of Americans on food stamps - THAT'S SIMPLY OUTRAGEOUS!!!!
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Fourteen-point-three percent of Americans on food stamps - THAT'S SIMPLY OUTRAGEOUS!!!!
Fourteen-point-three percent of Americans on food stamps - THAT'S SIMPLY OUTRAGEOUS!!!!
That cartoon is wrong in some ways. Fat, alcoholic smokers who are rich pay for themselves, as they should.
The article is dead on and points out our biggest challenge by far in this country. Everyone is looking for a government check. Everyone wants a handout. I do charity work and I can’t tell you how worried I am when I see an entire generation of young people — black and white — whose main goal is to see how many government checks they can get. Mainly young girls who get pregnant and start collecting. Then one finds out about another check and the others try to sign up.
Disability too. Everything is a disability these days — if you simply don’t get out of bed or sit around the house, you are depressed. And I’m not just talking out of my hat. That is what may qualify you under the SSI and state disability definitions. Social Security administrative law judges have awarded disability on these types of criteria.
It is what is going to destroy our society.
Since all toilets are outlawed other than 'low-flow', guess ALL plumbers have 'green' jobs. What a crock. Typical liberal lies. Typical liberal liars.
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