As far as your cherry picked information, you don't take the whole picture into effect. You fail to acknowledge the spending from other departments as well as at the state level when it comes to welfare. Looking through a limited lens, yes it may not seem there is a problem with social spending. But there is a total picture which I have laid out in my previous post.
I limited the scope of the welfare issue to Federal spending because your arguments were w.r.t. the USA on the National level. To be sure there are some states that undertake rather significant welfare burdens - there are also quite a few that do not. But your arguments were made against the ~$2.8 trillion Federal budget so that was where I focused my argument.
If we are to expand the discussion to include state, county, and city spending, then of course we must also include state revenue in the total budget figure. If we do this, we probably about double the total budget (state income taxes are typcially about 30-40% of the Fed. level, and then there is sales taxes, property taxes, and use taxes to add in as well).
Your argument was about Federal welfare, and my point was simply that when all is said and done, our Federal government has a rather minimal role in welfare. I don't have time at the moment to work on a states analysis as it will take a bit more time than a Federal analysis, but I'll try to get to it next time I have some dead time available.
No, Social Security funds are used for general programs. If you doubt that fact then where has the 1.8 trillion dollars went?
I'm not questioning that the SS trust fund has been raided. But how does this support your argument? Basically what you are saying is that because the generally conservative run government has been unable to keep its hands off of this fund, choosing to use it to supplement other types of programs, that this is an argument against SS? This does not make sense.
Also you can make claims of bailouts and the such but what would be the tax revenue consquences of letting these corporations going belly up? Corporations in America are the second highest taxed in the world(links if needed). What would the consquences of just simply letting them go bankrupt?
In the long run it would have made the economy stronger and healthier. Why should the average tax payer have to bail out the very rich when they make bad high-risk investments? By doing so, it simply sustains the wealth of those individuals and encourages such bad investing practices in the future.
I do not understand how you do not see the hypocrisy of supporting such welfare for the rich when you are so dead set against welfare for the poor.
As far as your care for the elderly, that's a slippery slope your on. Who decides when an elderly person no longer has a chance to have a meaningful life, the government? I don't think you would even contend that the government should decide when someone should die or live. Neither should medical personel, individual families should decide.
Not at all. I am not saying the government should decide that someone should die, simply that they should decide when it is unreasonable for the Medicare tax payer to pay for it. Individual families should decide - and they should pay for their decision. It's simple - do I buy a new Lexus or do I keep the Toyota and pay for a Medicare supplement that will cover quadruple-bypass surgery for my 88 year old Pop with severe coronary artery disease even if Medicare denies it? That's the decision families should make.
All I can say is that I worked on a medical research team many years ago and I saw how the system works. Its 80% about $$$ and 20% about what is good for the patient. Many times families put their elderly parents and grandparents through torment with little or no possibility of a good outcome, and the doctors and hospitals encourage this because it is highly profitable.
Think about it like this. If the end-of-life expenditures were cut by 30%, all the rest of our nations health care needs could be met at double the standard of care currently rendered, AND IT WOULD BE FREE (except for the medicare deduction). And in the end, the elderly would live longer because they'd get better health care before reaching that end-of-life crisis point.