Meet Alberto

We DO have a shared sense of destiny – it is why America and Americans are what we are. America wasn’t built by “sharing” assets, but by deploying capital and encouraging productivity.

Compare America in the 21st Century with Europe – and its income maintenance/entitlement economy. The European Union is what results from “income maintenance.” According to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund:

• The IMF projects, in 2025, a US GDP of $30.5 Trillion, 1.53x the EU’s $29.2 Trillion, from 1960 to 2024, the US has had a higher GDP for 52 of those years, versus the EU for 13 years, however, the US has had greater GDP per capita every year, every year since 1960!
• The US has double the wealth of the EU,
• The US is projected to grow 2+% per year in the upcoming years, the EU not so much.

America, employment, productive effort, is our shared destiny. It is why everyone want to come here, and why many of those who come here want to become Americans (not just geographically, but in spirit).

Unemployment compensation or “income maintenance”, has always been intended to be temporary, between jobs. Else it becomes “early retirement”. That is a necessity in an economy where “creative destruction” is the norm, AND essential. However, unemployment compensation must first be earned (by paying taxes).

David J. Price and Jae Song investigated the long-term effect of cash assistance for beneficiaries and their children by following up, after four decades, with participants in the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Treated families in this randomized experiment received thousands of dollars per year in extra government benefits for three or five years in the 1970s. Using administrative data from the Social Security Administration and the Washington State Department of Health, they found the added transfers caused adults to earn an average of $1,800 less per year after the experiment ended. Today, indefinite “income maintenance” makes no sense at the macro, or economy-wide level, due to immigration, politics, and the impact on work ethic.

Myself, I am not a slave to America, earning wages and paying taxes so other Americans can share in my efforts. I’ve been employed all but a few months of the past 55 years and remain employed today. President Obama might say “you didn’t build that”, trying to give others credit for my productive efforts. It’s true, I didn’t build everything I benefit from, but that argument only goes so far. I may not have built the road or the bridge I take to work everyday, but, my taxes and yours certainly did. So, yes, just like the architect and the bank and its depositors may not have actually built that building, they all contributed, in their own way. And, in terms of the defense of America, only a small percentage of mostly male Americans have donned the uniform emblazoned with a flag. One of my few regrets in life, 50+ years later, is that I wasn’t a better soldier.

Even though some of us served, all of us, you, I, all of us must pay taxes to provide for the general defense and “welfare” – but that is how “welfare” is earned and protected.

Our most significant fiscal challenges result from “entitlements” – Congress’ believes that because you are an American (and certain specified lawfully resident aliens), you should be entitled to certain items – including, for some, taxpayer subsidized health care coverage. That belief is the prime reason why America added $25+ Trillion in debt after President Obama signed Health Reform into law. It is the prime reason why we continue to spend $2 Trillion more each year than we are willing to tax – sending the bill to Americans too young to vote and generations yet unborn. And, it is not as if general revenues to the federal government haven’t increased nearly 200% over the past 25 years (now almost 300% of what they were at the turn of the Century).

And, you want to do what, create a new trust fund for income maintenance, further increase the deficit, speeding up while careening even further into debt, perhaps to crack-up coincident with the projected 2033 exhaustion of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds? Why would you create disincentives to work when we are running $2 Trillion in annual deficits, are $37 Trillion in debt, with Social Security and Medicare trust fund exhaustion anticipated in just 8 years?

We need more work, more income, more taxes as the status quo is not sustainable indefinitely!

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