As mayors across America begin to reclaim their public parks from Occupy protestors, it is worth mentioning again that despite their fringe views, violent behavior, and misdirected rage, the Occupiers are right about something, deep down.
Much like Occupiers stealing services from the homeless in Boston, America’s one percent is reaping benefits from the welfare state that millionaires should never have been given in the first place, but which are enshrined in the laws that liberals fought to create, and created that way on purpose.
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Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has released a report looking at government welfare payments to mllionaires. Since 2003, tax filers reporting at least $1 million in annual adjusted gross income have simultaneously collected:
- $74 million in government unemployment benefits
- $9 billion in government retirement benefits
- $316 million in government farm subsidies
- $16 million in government-guaranteed education loans
- $89 million in “conservation” grants.
Contrary to what you might think, this is not the result of a bunch of millionaires greedily manipulating government in order to get themselves a dollars extra here or there. Coburn makes this excellent but subtle point in the introduction to his report on the true origin of universal entitlements:
“[T]his reverse Robin Hood style of wealth redistribution is an intentional effort to get all Americans bought into a system where everyone appears to benefit.”
If you read a lot of liberal blogs, you may recognize here a common argument in defense of our Social Security and other programs. Because it isn’t a means-tested welfare program, it is often said, it enjoys more public support. And because middle-class and upper-class welfare have become such common tools for liberals to justify safety-net programs, the question of whether millionaires should actually get the money – whether it’s a good use of taxpayers’ funds to pay them – just never comes up.
A similar argument can be applied to some of the tax breaks Coburn attacks in his report. I don’t understand why he rails against simple business deductions, but did you know that millionaires took $12.5 million in electric vehicle tax credits and $76 million in “renewable energy” credits in 2009? If “government” is just the word we use to describe things we do together, then we have collectively decided that green energy is important enough to justify we should redistributing money from struggling workers with families to pay millionaires’ energy costs.
And by the way, congratulations to the millionaires who actually had the stones to file for unemployment.
