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Friday, August 10, 2012

Ten Things

Gavin McInnes is a libertarian who believes that there are some things liberals get right. He's correct about this, of course, although I don't know that he's correct on the specific things he mentions in this article. At any rate he lists ten examples of issues on which he agrees at least somewhat with the liberal position.

It's an amusing read, the tone of which he establishes at the outset:
[U]nlike extremist Muslims and Hasidic Jews, some of the things [liberals] believe are actually correct. For example:
  1. AMERICAN FOOD PORTIONS ARE TOO LARGE
  2. CEO SALARIES ARE TOO HIGH
  3. OBAMACARE IS A GOOD IDEA
  4. WAR IS BAD
  5. WOMEN WHO GET PREGNANT FROM A RAPE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO ABORT
  6. GAYS SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET MARRIED
  7. BLACKS ARE VICTIMS OF SYSTEMIC RACISM
  8. BIG BUSINESS HAS TOO MUCH INFLUENCE ON CAPITOL HILL
  9. MACHINE GUNS SHOULD BE ILLEGAL
  10. DRUGS SHOULD BE LEGAL
When you read McInnes' rationale for each of these you'll probably find yourself agreeing with more of them than you might have expected to.
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Welfare State

This chart, courtesy of The Blaze, will probably ruin your day. It provides a stark illustration of the explosion in dependency on the federal government from 2009 to 2011. Keep in mind that it doesn't include Social Security or Medicare.

Today there are over 110 million people in the U.S. currently receiving some form of government welfare. That's up from 97 million in just three years. According to the article at The Blaze, Medicaid has increased from 34 million people in 2000 to 54 million today and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) has grown from 17 million to 45 million.

Moreover, spending on food stamps alone is projected to reach nearly $800 billion over the next decade. Not only citizens, but non-citizens are eligible for food stamps paid for by the American taxpayer:
USDA has acknowledged a formal partnership with Mexico to boost food stamp enrollment amongst non-citizens, migrant workers and foreign nationals. In a ‘radio novela’ USDA even depicted an individual who resisted food stamp enrollment (saying her husband earned enough to take care of them) but who was successfully pressured into enrollment.
Why not? It's only money. If we need more we can just print it.
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