Government Beneficiaries

There are many other Paraducer power castes that we could examine, such as realtors and local politicians. But the last power caste I want to explore is the government beneficiary.

In this class we could lump government employees, and they fit, but we have covered them before. Beneficiaries we need to discuss are those who receive government checks as transfer payments. Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses. American politicians have distilled that to its core, removed the robes and thrown out the spirituality. Today, the government check is the opiate of the masses, and not even a very large check at that.

Now a transfer payment is money taken from one citizen and sent to another. These include unearned payments such as welfare and food stamps. They also include the social security payment, presumably paid out of a trust fund that the government is maintaining on our behalf. The Heritage Foundation reports that this trust fund does not actually exist in bankable form:

“The Social Security “trust fund” is essentially a bookkeeping system through which the government lends money to itself. There is no pool of actual assets that is being reserved to pay the benefits of future retirees. The Social Security trust fund contains nothing more than IOUs (in the form of special issue U.S. Trea­sury bonds), which the federal government can repay only though higher taxes, massive borrowing, or massive cuts in other federal programs. While many workers thought that the system’s annual sur­pluses were being used to build up a reserve for baby boomers, the federal government has been spending this money to fund other government programs and to reduce the government debt.” ^[23]

Also receiving payments are military retirees and other pension plan subjects.

These people obviously come from a large cross section of society, and are not all welfare mothers. (Many of these people arranged with the government to receive those payments as a condition of employment, and that’s fine.) Represented here are Producers, Consumers and Paraducers, in their personal lives, but as a group they are an enabler of governmental Paraducerism. How?

Their common interest in receipt of that government check binds them together with cords of paper. Paper? Yes, because nothing connects two people more tightly than the almighty dollar. No matter the cultural or racial or religious differences, common economic goals can make the worst of enemies the best of friends, and make lovers out of strangers.

That common interest causes them to vote and vote heavily to preserve that government payment, with the encouragement of the Paraducer news media. This gives the government, specifically the politicians and their bureaucrat feeders, a ticket to immortality not seen since the Night of the Living Dead.

What a picture! Government, which has not had an original idea since, well, ever, living on and on with transfusions of votes bought with the money of transfer payments to a group of people as diverse as the fish in the sea. Government: Plodding blindly, taking, frightening, Paraducing its way through society, enabling other Paraducers, penalizing Producers. All for the price of a few hundred dollars a month.

Unfortunately, government enables the institutions that grow government. The power bought by these transfer payments is the lifeblood of enablement. A cycle from hell.

The tragedy here is that the vote of a Producer is corrupted toward the government’s interests, if only indirectly. That Producer’s value to society, what he produces, is minimized as he expends energy to preserve his check. Or he ignores his producing instincts and finances that new satellite dish instead, more interested in what’s on channel 471.

The true stripe of government shows when a precious program is threatened, as with Social Security reform. I will not delve into all the pros and cons of competing proposals, but I only want to point out government’s reaction to the mere suggestion that Producers be allowed to invest part of their Social Security withholding in private accounts, out of the reach of government. Listen to Ted Kennedy in a 2005 speech:

“I categorically reject the deceptive and dangerous claim that the outcome last November was somehow a sweeping, or a modest, or even a miniature mandate for reactionary measures like privatizing Social Security, redistributing the tax burden in the wrong direction, or packing the federal courts with reactionary judges.” ^[24]

He considers Social Security reform privatization a “reactionary measure.” Why? Because it reduces his power in government. This comment also reveals his desire to redistribute the tax burden in the ‘right’ direction, that is in your direction, Producer, upwind in the direction of the scent of money.

Teddy and his cronies have senior citizens up in arms over any proposed change to the system. The AARP, a group representing many Social Security recipients, agitates against privatization:

“With shared responsibility, we can ensure Social Security’s promise for future generations. Everyone can contribute to a fair and balanced solution so that we meet our obligation. Whether it involves changes to benefits, to revenue or some combination of both, we must meet the needs of all Americans.” ^[25]

Individualism and private investment are not considered by the AARP or Senator Kennedy. The government and its beneficiaries look to you, the Producers, to participate in a Paraducer’s nirvana of “shared responsibility,” where you pay not only your way, but pay for several other people as well. This is pure socialism.

The fact of the matter is that government takes about 7% of your paycheck (calling it FICA) and throws it down the toilet of government waste, double that if you are self employed. If you make $50,000 per year and save 7% of it annually ($3,500) at 5% interest (half the historical rate of return for the stock market), the before-tax payout at the end of thirty years would be $2.9 million! With money like that, you would not be dependent on government, would you? That’s why the Paraducers in government have to prevent such private investment.

As I was writing this, a timely report ^[26] appeared in USA Today highlighting a huge growth in government dependency in the form of Medicaid enrollees. From 1997 to 2004, Medicaid spending jumped from $159 billion to $294 billion. The article continues, “The expansion has cemented government’s role as the nation’s primary health insurer. About 100 million people – 1 in 3 – now have government coverage through Medicaid.”

Think about it, Producer. A hundred million people, dependent on the government. And what does government think about this? The article quotes John Begala, member of the Ohio Commission to Reform Medicaid as saying that the program’s expansion “is one of the great policy success stories of the decade.” Success for government, drain on you.

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.” – C.S. Lewis