Raz,
On top of it all, the current workforce can't sustain the retirement of the Baby-Boomers. We need an expanded labor pool. Where's it going to come from?
being a BabyBoomer myself, and seeing the liberal approach to govt handouts and entitlements, I see more welfare recipients taking advantage of the benefits of not working. we need reforms from all sides.
Let me restate that I am a political and fiscal conservative by any rational definition. I vote Republican and have since I cast my first presidential ballot for Reagan in 1984.
That said...welfare spending in this country has held steady at between 2.5% and 3% of GDP since the early 1970's when the '74 recession drove the rate to 2.5% of GDP. Since then it has held approximately steady at 2.5%-3% of GDP with spikes corresponding to economic crises in '78, '81, '91-92, '01, and '07. The '07 spike was the highest ever, to over 4.5% of GDP. But it has dropped precipitiously and now sits below 3% of GDP. That's still too high, for a conservative's preference, and needs to be dropped - if not back to 1963 (pre-Great Society) levels of 1.7% or so, then at least solidly back to late 1998-2001 levels (2.5%). We can quibble all day over what the ideal level should be. That's not the point here.
The point is this: the only reason "more people than ever" are consuming welfare benefits is that there ARE "more people than ever". In 1965 the US populations was 195 million people, in 2010 it was 208 million. Yet welfare spending has tended to hold steady between 2.5% and 3% of GDP since about 1970. That means the percentage of the population that is receiving welfare hasn't really changed, and most of that population by far isn't receiving any welfare benefit.
Yes, there are more people receiving welfare, but there are more people producing in the economy too, and the rate of "welfare consumers" to "economic producers" hasn't really changed much. In the grand scale of things, it hasn't really changed at all since 1970.
