How Dumb Is Dumb?
I know it is not nice to call someone dumb but sometimes you just got to face it. People can sure act dumb. That doesn’t make them bad people. It does mean they should make an effort to educate themselves. I’m sixty years old and am amazed at how much less I know today than I thought I knew thirty years ago. I try daily to expand my knowledge and awareness.
I sometimes feel alone in this pursuit. Here is what I mean. The Republican Party has veered radically to the right over the past twenty years. That is not my imagination or my opinion. Today Barry Goldwater could not win the nomination for president because of his stance on social issues. Ronald Reagan could not be nominated because of his position on taxes.
When asked at one of the debates every candidate said they would not accept one dollar of revenue in exchange for ten dollars in spending cuts. Since it is accepted on a bi-partisan basis that we must lower our deficit and national debt than it is axiomatic that any Republican elected President would seek deep cuts in spending and since only 17% of the budget is discretionary spending than the cuts must come from the three largest budget items, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Defense.
This is where the seriously dumb (or as the severely conservative Mitt Romney may say severely dumb) comes in. A major part of the Republican message is that the welfare safety net is providing a free ride for moochers who are too lazy, and/or lacking in moral character, to work for themselves. While there is perhaps some anecdotal merit to this, hey we all have a shiftless relative; empirical data indicates a very different picture.
Aaron Carroll of Indiana University has found that in 2010 in the states Gallup ranks as most conservative residents received 21.2% of their income in government transfers compared to the residents in the ten most liberal states who received 17.1%. In addition, since not working would automatically make you lower income, the evidence does not support the belief that welfare is perpetuating a lazy work ethic and sliding values. This is supported by the following graph showing how the percentage of transfer payments to the poor has been declining.
While it is true that the poor receive the highest percentage of support that should not be surprising; it is a safety net after all. What is surprising is that the fastest growing group of welfare recipients are the middle class and that this group often supports Republican efforts to severely cut government spending on safety net programs.
Why is it that those who receive the most from the government are the very ones who currently believe that all deficit reduction should come from cuts to spending? There are three opinions on this. In his book “What’s Wrong With Kansas” Thomas Frank said that working class Americans vote against their own economic self-interest because of G.O.P exploitation of emotional social issues. There is certainly truth to this because some voters are committed solely on a candidate’s position on abortion, gay rights or immigration.
Columbia University’s Andrew Gelman points to social issues but defines the divide as more prevalent among the affluent that in red states are much more predominantly Republican than in blue states.
Yet it is Cornell University’s Suzanne Mettler who hits the nail on the head from my perspective when she points out the confusion (nice way of saying dumb) among government transfer payment recipients as to where they fit in the system. According to Mettler 44% of Social Security recipients, 43% receiving unemployment payments, and 40% of those on Medicare say that they have not used a government program. That is what I call the “Keep your big government hands off of my Medicare syndrome”.
I think we have all witnessed this. Its common for those in retirement to feel that any benefits they receive from Social Security or Medicare have been earned from their own work and payment and therefore not coming from the government. This is in contrast to their equally strong belief that the “other” guy is a mooch. This may be an understandable emotional reaction but boy is that dumb.
The reality of that lack of understanding and knowledge will come crashing down upon these largely middle class safety net recipients if the Republicans are allowed to implement their quite radical plan to balance the budget solely from cuts to transfer payments. This will place the burden squarely upon the backs of those very supporters who elected them because they thought the lazy poor guy would get booted off the roles and made to work for a living.
There is a solution and as is often the case it lies in the middle ground. With a reasoned program of increased taxes upon the most wealthy of our nation, those whose sacrifice will have the least impact upon their standard of living, and gradual phased reductions in Social Security and Medicare benefits, thus mitigating draconian cuts upon the most vulnerable citizens, we may bring our fiscal house to order in a more measured fashion.
Radical measures seldom have lasting effect although leaving a swath of pain, fear and destruction. If we follow the radical fiscal measures proposed by the current Republican candidates there would be an enormous backlash if they were enacted. The dumb will get smart very quick.
Mike Ryan