Why is government giving tax money and increasing debt to support Americans who don’t need it?

If one was truly cynical they could surmise that the spreading of government payments and subsidies across nearly all income levels was a matter of buying votes and establishing never ending dependency on those running government, often with the illusion of it all being free.

If it were otherwise, why isn’t assistance targeted at those in need and designed to help those individuals gain greater personal independence and why not consider one’s liquid assets in the eligibility criteria?

The following is summarized from the following Wall Street Journal article. Entitlements for the Affluent.

• The ex­panded child tax credit has be­come a monthly gov­ern­ment check that trans­fers large sums of money from child­less tax­payers to fi­nan­cially se­cure mid­dle-class fam­i­lies. A mar­ried cou­ple mak­ing $150,000 a year with four chil­dren (two un­der the age of 6, two above) would qual­ify for $13,200 a year. [a couple earning $400,000 can also receive a tax credit]

• A new en­ti­tle­ment caps child-care costs at 7% of income and was ini­tially lim­ited to par­ents mak­ing up to 200% of their state’s me­dian in­come. But progressives elim­imitated the cap in commit­tee so it would cover wealth­ier vot­ers. The en­ti­tle­ment is now universal.

• De­moc­rats also want paid fam­ily leave—about two-thirds of av­er­age wages for up to 12 weeks a year for any fam­ily care. In the case of new-borns both par­ents would be en­ti­tled to leave. This means a mar­ried cou­ple with a new­born—each earn­ing $200,000 – could each col­lect more than $1,000 in weekly ben­efits. A cou­ple mak­ing $100,000 each would be el­i­gi­ble for roughly the same amount.

• This spring’s Covid bill elim­i­nated the in­come cap (400% of the poverty level) on who qual­i­fies for subsidies under Obamacare. A fam­ily of five with a 60-year-old head of house­hold in Prescott, Ariz. could earn $350,000 a year and still qual­ify for an Obamacare sub­sidy of $21,309. At $500,000 of in­come, that fam­ily would still get $8,559 in fed­eral health­care dol­lars.

• The pending legislation in­cludes a new $12,500 electric ve­hi­cle tax credit. Since EVs cost be­tween $10,000 and $15,000 more than sim­i­lar gas-pow­ered ve­hi­cles, this money will mostly flow to well-off coastal dwellers, es­pe­cially in Cal­i­for­nia. A cou­ple can make $800,000 a year and still qual­ify for some of the credit.

• The big­gest subsidy of all may be the re­turn of the state and lo­cal tax de­duc­tion currently capped at $10,000. Only some 15% of tax­pay­ers itemize their deduc­tions, and most of those who would ben­e­fit from a higher cap are the af­flu­ent—again mostly in richer coastal states.