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Everyone knows what conservatives don't like about the welfare state.
It's time for a right-of-center vision of what it *should* be doing:
amazon.com/dp/1630695432/
Chris Pope
16.9K posts
Chris Pope
@CPopeHC
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute.
Opinions my own.
Joined July 2017
- The United States is one of the few developed countries where the rich pay a higher share of their income in taxes than the poor: wid.world/document/techn…
- In France, retirees now have higher incomes on average than working adults: insee.fr/fr/statistique…
- These numbers are surely less shocking to people who follow criminal justice issues closely, but wow.
- Food as a share of household spending: 1800: 75% 1900: 39% 2020: 9% bls.gov/opub/reports/c… archive.org/details/pursui… bls.gov/opub/reports/c…
- The welfare state mostly redistributes from young to old, rather than from rich to poor. census.gov/data/datasets/… meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/survey…
- The average disposable income in most European countries would be considered poor in the United States: dart.lisdatacenter.org/dart
- The poorest fifth of American working age households are better off than those in Canada, Denmark, Britain, and Germany because their market income is higher and their taxes are lower, after accounting for all monetary benefits: lisdatacenter.org
- Medicaid spending on "Emergency Services for Undocumented Aliens" bumped up during the pandemic, but suddenly soared last year: medicaid.gov/medicaid/finan…
- Fiscal policy is about to become a lot less pleasant: cbo.gov/publication/58…
- The House Ways and Means committee claimed Medicare would cost $1.3bn in its first full year. It actually cost $4.4bn. W&M predicted Medicaid would cost $0.15bn; it actually cost $1.8bn. This is precisely *why* we created CBO.Fun fact: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security didn't have a CBO score when they were first signed into law.
- We're already redistributing far too much from workers to retirees. Young households have lower standards of living by every metric. manhattan.institute/article/the-ov…
The Republican tax plan gives a $4,000 higher standard deduction for those over 65! Why on earth would you do this? We’re already bankrupting the country for the sake of old people, they don’t need any more advantages. - Replying to @CPopeHCThe state seems to have classified 56% of its increased spending on unauthorized immigrants as "emergency care". Normally, emergency care accounts for only 5% of healthcare spending.
- The United States in 2019 had the highest levels of disposable income of G7 countries for 9 out of 10 income deciles. dart.lisdatacenter.org/dart
