Welfare State: Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages – CNBC

1 in 3 of us is on the government dole:

Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

“The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients. “Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.”

The economist gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, “either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,” she said.

Ouch.

CNBC’s Fast Money: Welfare State: Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages – CNBC.

Related articles

• The Welfare State and American Exceptionalism (joshblackman.com)
• None Dare Call It Welfare (jonathanturley.org)
• We need a shift in priorities to make welfare reform truly meaningful (leftfootforward.org)
• Who is Receiving Welfare and Medicaid? (annecwoodlen.wordpress.com)
• What are the negative effects of children who have grown up on welfare? (sphswelfare.wordpress.com)