A research paper by Cornell’s Professor Suzanne Mettler states that nearly half of US social program recipients believe they “have not used a government social program.” Programs such as Home Mortgages, Student Loans, and Earned Income Tax Credit were among the most frequently used, with over 45% of all the people claiming to not use government programs.
What We Can Take From This
The point we cannot afford to miss is that everybody benefits from government social programs. According to Student Loan Hero, nearly 71% of university students that attend a four year college has some type of college debt. How many of those students wouldn’t go to college because they could not pay for it?
Student loan debt is a serious problem, and a discussion for another day, but it illustrates a point. Many of the same people who claim that they are “independent” and claim that anyone who uses welfare or Medicare are parasites have directly benefited from government programs.
Another strange thing that I found when I was looking at the study was that all of the tax deductions and credit programs were near the top of table. Maybe you could chalk this up to being misinformed about what a government program is, but I don’t think that is so.
The Majority Of Americans Receive Government Benefits
A post by Forbes in 2014 stated that 52% of Americans used government benefits in some way. A little more than one fourth, or 42 million of the 161 million were senior citizens receiving Social Security or Medicare. While one of the most talked about bills in recent memory, The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was used by only 10 million out of the 161 million total. While the author of the article, Merrill Matthews does have some good points, his use of saying that the “The country has crossed the entitlement tipping point.” is a big slap in the face to millions of Americans that have no other choice when using programs like Food Stamps and Welfare. Yes, we need less people on food stamps and welfare and we need for those people to be more independent, but claiming they feel entitled to these things is nonsense.
These statistics make Republicans who claim that government programs should be de-funded look like idiots. Maybe it is a pride thing to claim that you don’t use government programs? Take what you will from both studies, but I feel that this further proves government programs won’t go away soon.
Featured image from Minnesota Women’s Consortium.