Governments take from the middle class and give to whom?

As the government has taken over the responsibility for charity, something once handled mostly by private groups, several facts jump out at the curious. One is the inefficiency of government charities. Compare the Salvation Army where 96% of what is donated to them actually goes to help an individual in need, to government charity and with the average government charitable program less than 20% of a department, say the department of Human services, budget actually helps people in need. That is a huge difference. Also if you study the amount of government largess distributed less than 29% goes to need based programs. Huge agricultural corporations receive a major percentage of farm subsidies, not poor family farmers. More than 3.2 billion went to GE last year, most of us would not consider them needy. For the government to be taking from middle income Americans that are struggling in this economy to send to multinational corporations or politically connected ones, such as Obama's friends Facebook. They got 32 million in tax dollars to supposedly create 35 jobs? Do you really think facebook would not have hired those 35 people if you and I were not forced to pony up that 32 million? So generally speaking the government takes from one person and gives it to someone with political connections.

Study government spending and you discover a striking fact: most government transfers are not from the rich to the poor. The most important factor in determining the pattern of redistribution appears to be political influence. Another disturbing fact is of the 29% of the money stolen from hard working Americans given to benefit the "poor" more than half of that is in the form of medical care. Government regulation and manipulation of health care has driven up the costs significantly. When you consider the AMA has severely limited the number of medical schools that can graduate doctors creating a shortage and government limits the number of insurance companies and the insurance products available increasing costs many times over. There are fewer medical schools in this country now than there were in 1900!
So by my math the government steals $1 and of that 29 cents goes to "the poor" but 14.5 cents of it really goes to doctors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies where the costs are bloated because of government intervention. Leaving only 14.5 cents. Of the 14.5 cents, 80% of it is spent on government employees so only 2.9 cents actually goes to someone needing help. If it was handled by the Salvation Army of the 14.5 cents 13.92 cents would go to people in need.

I have to wonder if the medical care provided is actual medical care or the medical insurance "value" provided. I live in Oregon where the insurance industry is totally controlled and with health insurance everything must be covered many things without a deductible or co-pay, whether you need it or not. Because of this Oregon has some of the highest health insurance costs in the nation. So I wonder, does that 2.9 cents include the "value" of health insurance provided for low income people even if they never see a doctor? So the $800 per month or more "value" they receive is truly non existent for them and really benefits the insurance company? Again not generally someone most of us would consider needy and want to donate to, if we had the choice. My son was a single male 24 looking for health insurance. Very healthy and there are no major medical type policies available. Every policy he was able to buy must cover pap smears and mammograms without a deductible or co-pay as well as pregnancy and smoke cessation. He wanted a policy that would just cover him in case of a serious injury or accident. Here it is, all or nothing, so he chose nothing. Not many years ago I had a policy that was a small group policy for my husbands business. Then the state of Oregon decided his group was not big enough. They increased the number of employees required to create a group, our insurance was cancelled. Thanks for the help! In some states business associations the Realtor, Bartenders or waitresses associations could get together to create a group to get health insurance with different terms and better rates. Not in Oregon.

We have politicians out there blowing hot air and telling us how they are going to help us. How many people really look at what they do and where the money they steal from us is spent? How much of what they take from us would we choose to donate to pay for what they spend it on? They all agree that increasing taxes costs jobs. Right now unemployment is very high and the United States has the distinction of having the highest corporate tax rate on the planet. One of our biggest problems is public employee unions. That is a large part of how they end up soaking up the 80% of the 14.5 cents. Next blog will address that. http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-public-sector-unions Many more details on the federal scam robbing from the middle class to give to who they choose! We should be able to decide what we pay for. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Redistribution.html