How poor would we be if the Randroids had their way?
by digby
This is sobering:
Were it not for a broad range of government programs meant to reduce poverty by providing assistance to low-income Americans, the poverty rate in the United States would be nearly twice as high as it is today.
The rate currently stands at 15 percent, a generational high. Without programs like Social Security, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and low-income tax credits, it would rise to nearly 30 percent, as this chart from the New York Times shows.
This seems as if it's a good thing and in fact, 15 percent is still far too high, right? But to the right wing, this is evidence that the government is enabling a whole bunch of people to suck off the government teat when they should be working. And no it doesn't matter that a large number of these people are elderly and sick. They should have thought ahead.
If 30% of the country would be in poverty if the government didn't "interfere" by stealing the money from the people who earned and giving it to those who don't deserve it, it's not an indictment of the free market, it's an indictment of the parasites.
Here's our man Rand explaining it to you:
"When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you're causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy. And it really - while it seems good, it actually does a disservice to the people you're trying to help."
This morning he said he would support some kind of extension as long as we robbed the money from someone else and lowered taxes in places with high unemployment to magically create jobs for all these people. I'm guessing he had forgotten that this was an opportunity to push for tax cuts in his earlier comments. He's still kind of new at this.
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