I kicked around a lot of ideas for my inaugural post on this blog and finally settled on entitlement programs. The reason I felt this was a good jumping off point is it seems that the major problem with our government right now is coming to any sort of agreement on how to handle this particular problem.
What are entitlement Programs?
This is a great definition to read before going on.
Basically it seems to be that there are four sides to this argument that break down along traditional party lines of conservative and liberal ideals. Keep in mind that this is a very basic break down of the arguments and that there are variations in each party.
The Liberals:
The liberal stance on entitlement programs that benefit citizens is based on the idea that the government has a responsibility to care for those who can not care for themselves and who do not have the same promise of opportunity that the average citizen has access to. The entitlement programs that they tend to support are classically defined as welfare and range from Food assistance through cash assistance.
However, when it comes to entitlement programs that benefit large corporations (and yes those do exist) then the liberals tend to be a bit more along the line of wanting to end this particular entitlement. This is often seen as a tax increase in order to end "corporate welfare". It should be noted that liberals actually do sponsor quite a bit of corporate entitlement programs in the alternative energy sector and other places.
The Conservatives:
Conservative elements are universally opposed to most if not all citizen based entitlement programs. Conservatives tend to oppose these kind of entitlement programs bases on the ideas that each of us should stand on our own to maximize the chance of freedom for each individual to win or lose according to their actions. The standard argument against the types of programs tends to be along the lines of "My money goes to pay for someone else to not work while I have to work." another common argument is "If I didn't have to pay taxes for these programs everyone would have more money and there wouldn't be a need for them."
In stark contrast though is how most conservatives view corporate entitlement programs. Almost universally most conservatives are in favor of giving big business tax breaks with the idea that these businesses are the job creators. Also along the lines of big business receiving tax cuts, most conservatives also favor tax cuts for small and medium businesses. The main argument for this reasoning is that by not taxing businesses people will be paid more and these job creators can hire more people.
It is pretty easy to see that there are two groupings of entitlement programs. The first grouping is citizen based entitlements or more commonly referred to as welfare. The second is corporate entitlement also referred to as corporate welfare. It's also plain to see that both of these groupings have plenty of great substance for discussion. While I will eventually make my way through both of them, I want to narrow the field down a bit and focus on welfare for the next little bit.
Why are entitlement programs such a big concern?
The basic reason that entitlement programs are such a big concern lately is because since the 1980's entitlement spending has totaled over half our government budget every year. This means that over fifty percent of the money taken in taxes an borrowed by our government is spent in maintaining these programs. Because of the recent recession, we have had to take a serious look at the affects of this spending and try to find a way to fix it before we bankrupted our country.
The problem was further increased because our government got into a serious case of gridlock in trying to find a solution to what is a very obvious problem. Again the solutions to the problems came down to party lines. The liberals wanted to increase taxes on the wealthy (who for the record to pay a considerable amount less in taxes than the middle class) and the conservatives wanting to slash entitlement funding if not out right get rid of it.
Now if you are reading this blog, then chances are that you are probably already aware of this extremely frustrating gridlock in our government, so I will save everyone some time and not go over it in any great detail. If you haven't been paying attention to what our government has been doing then take my word for it when I say it was a very very bad thing. Also I would suggest you go learn a bit about it, it is something that actually affects every single one of us in some way.
So we have a big problem and that's what we should do with entitlement programs. While the standard answers seem to be either "increase taxes" or "get rid of them." I actually have a better idea and that is what I will cover in my next blog.
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