Big Government and Race Relations

I made the following comment in a response to an article that talked about race relations under the Obama administration:

Good race relations are based on mutual respect and ultimately, respect has to be earned.  It is not earned by those long dependent on government or by those who use the force of government to take what they want from others.  A consequence of this is that Big Government, which does make some dependent and does take values by force from many, is itself a major force creating disrespect.  Having done so, that disrespect tends to become racial disrespect if there are differences by race in the likelihood of being dependent or in that of being robbed or forced to contribute services by government.

There are many, many reasons for opposing Big Government.  The most fundamental one is that Big Government is necessarily a violator of our sovereign individual rights.  As such, Big Government shows its disrespect for every individual.  That heavy disrespect is propagated throughout a society governed by such a Big Government.  This makes it very unlikely that the people of that society will not often treat others with disrespect.  This is terribly corrosive to the good-will and the sense of benevolence with which we should be able to treat our fellow man in a free society.  The subsequent loss of good-will and respect degrades the quality of life in how we trade with others and how we live with others as neighbors.  And for the reasons I outlined in my quote above, it is very corrosive of racial relations.

It is no surprise then that racial relations have not been well-served by Obama's unrelenting commitment to Big Government.  The cancerous growth of long term unemployment benefit, food stamp, Social Security disability, Medicaid, subsidized ObamaCare, and many other programs for dependents upon the government, has created many more dependent persons, who have lost the respect of many more productive and self-reliant individuals.  The cost of these programs has placed increased burdens on those productive people and at least some of them have naturally become angry at those dependents who receive the benefits of their hard work.  It is very hard for productive people to respect unproductive people when those unproductive people show so little respect for productive people by using government as their agent to take what they want by the use of force.

Continued References to Economic Recovery Are Weird

Fewer Americans were employed in December 2013 than were employed in either December 2006 or December 2007.  The percentage of non-institutionalized adults employed both in December 2012 and December 2013 was far lower than in December 2006 and December 2007.

 Over and over we hear that the economy is recovering, albeit slowly.  We have heard this throughout 2012 and 2013.  But note that the percentage of working age Americans employed in December 2011, 2012, and 2013 has been stuck at 58.6%.  This is 4.8% below the employment percentage of December 2006, which was just before the sudden cost of oil increase in early 2007 and before the subsequent financial crisis in 2008.

This is an incredible degree of employment stagnation.  Yes, 58.6% is above the low 58.2% of December 2009, but the 0.4% increase relative to that low point is only a fraction of the total December 2009 loss relative to December 2006 of 0.4% / 5.2% = 0.077.  In other words, for all intents and purposes, from 2009 through 2013 the employment situation has been essentially unchanged and awful.

We need to have 11.843 million more jobs to have the same percentage employment we had in December 2006.  Because of the big government policies of George W. Bush prior to Obama, that December 2006 employment percentage was already lower than it had been in December 1999.  Our jobs stagnation problem actually began at the start of this century.

Apparently a government jobs program, consisting of

• bailouts, 
• stimulus programs, 
• Food Stamp increases,
• Social Security Disability increases,
• Extended Unemployment Benefits, 
• ObamaCare, 
• Dodd-Frank and other financial regulations,
• Tax increases,
• Increased fossil fuel sourced energy costs (recently moderated by shale oil and gas increased production on private lands, while extensive federal land and off-shore oil and gas were denied development), and
• Subsidized so-called green energy,

has not been very effective in increasing employment.

But then a program to take people out of the private sector workforce, to transfer money from the private sector to the government sector, and to limit the options of the private sector's entrepreneurs and consumers could have no other outcome.  It is not as though this sort of program has not been tried before and been found to fail disastrously.  But those who believe in the efficacy of big government will not learn from history.

As a result, we have had at least 5 years of a jobs depression.  Given Obama's wrongheadedness and pigheadedness, we are likely to see this continue for at least another 4 years.  Four years being 3 more years of Obama and one year for a more rational and less abusive President to return control of the economy to the private sector.

Food Stamp Use and Poverty Level by State

Since the Great Socialist Recession began, the number of Americans receiving food stamps has increased by 20 million.  Before the recession, the Food Stamp program cost $35 billion, but it was costing $78 billion by 2011.  In 2012, the Food Stamp program spent $85 billion.  Meanwhile, the numbers of Americans below the poverty level was not increasing anywhere near as quickly.  On looking into this, I found this map of the population percentage by state of people on Food Stamps and wondered how the Food Stamp use by state compared with the percentage of the population below the poverty level by state.

The following table shows the comparisons of the percentage of the population of a state on Food Stamps and of those below the poverty level in 2011.  Data for 2012 does not yet seem to be available.  It also gives the rate of growth of those on Food Stamps and of those below the poverty level.  The last column shows the difference in percent of those below the poverty level and those on Food Stamps.  The table only includes those states for which at least 15.0% of the population was either receiving Food Stamps or below the poverty level.  The states in red are those with a higher percentage of the population on Food Stamps than are below the poverty level.

In all, 28 states have either 15% of the population under the poverty level or on Food Stamps.  Those states with double-digit increases in the percentage of the population on Food Stamps in 2011 compared to 2010 have the increases color-coded.  The states of Maine, Oregon, and Michigan have especially embraced the Food Stamp program, having substantially more people on them than are below the poverty level.  California, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas in order have the largest shortfalls on those on Food Stamps compared to those below the poverty level as of 2011.

Obama Wants Bigger Government on Top of This?

From his State of the Union address, it could not be more clear that Obama wants a much bigger government with much more spending and much more control over our lives.  He wants to impose this further growth upon the already unbelievable increases in government spending since 2002 as shown in this great graphic from the current issue of the magazine of the National Federation of Independent Businesses:

Of course there is no limit to the extraction of money, time, and other resources from the private sector for the use of the government sector in this fool's mind.  All of these programs have grown much faster than real, per capita income has in that time.  This has been especially true during the four years Obama has occupied the White House.  This is a huge problem he simply does not recognize, which means he is either incredibly dumb or incredibly evil.

Chuck Roger - Government-run, taxpayer-funded, anti-poverty programs do not work

Chuck Roger, in his Clear Thinking, The Blog, has an interesting post on the ineffectiveness of government anti-poverty programs.  He notes that government anti-poverty spending has increased by 89% in the last decade, 2000 to 2010.  Looking at the graph of anti-poverty spending as a percent of GDP, back in 1962 it was 0.5% of GDP, but is now 4.4% of GDP, which is almost a 9 times increase in the redistribution of income from taxpayers to welfare recipients in that time.  The average American is giving up $4800 a year to fund these anti-poverty programs.  The spending on food stamps has increased by a factor of three in the last 10 years. 

Despite all of this effort, the number of those in "poverty" had not changed much over the years.  Recently, due to the mostly government-induced and the government-prolonged recession, the number of people in poverty has increased.  Of course, most of the people in poverty under normal circumstances are the young who are students or in their first jobs.  Many still live with their parents.  Until we get rid of the young, we will always have similar numbers of people in "poverty" as we do now.  The need for anti-poverty programs is mostly a fraud.  The idea that government should and can effectively provide anti-poverty help is entirely a fraud.