{"id":132421,"date":"2024-10-31T08:04:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T12:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=132421"},"modified":"2024-10-31T18:42:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T22:42:00","slug":"w-post-george-will-a-mountain-of-government-payments-buries-the-myth-of-american-self-reliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=132421","title":{"rendered":"(W Post) George Will&#8211;A mountain of government payments buries the myth of American self-reliance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Payments from government entitlement programs \u2014 transfer payments \u2014 are the fastest-growing major component of citizens\u2019 personal income. Such transfers are the third-largest source of personal income: In 2022, the average citizen received almost as much from government transfers ($11,500) as from investments ($12,900), and more than one-quarter as much money as was obtained from work. This average citizen received six times more (adjusted for inflation) in government transfer payments than in 1970, during which span income from other sources increased less than half as much. Transfers\u2019 share of total (inflation-adjusted) personal income has more than doubled since 1970, from 8.2 percent to 17.6 percent in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Washington-based Economic Innovation Group, which promotes economic dynamism, has released a report, \u201cThe Great \u2018Transfer\u2019-mation,\u201d explaining how swiftly U.S. communities became dependent on government transfer payments. In 2022, Americans received $3.8 trillion in government transfers, 18 percent of all personal income. In 1970, not even 1 percent of counties received one-quarter or more of personal income from transfers. By 2000, 10 percent did; in 2022, it was 53 percent. This is certain to increase as the population ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The primary explanation: the aging U.S. population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2024\/10\/30\/government-entitlement-spending-medicare-medicaid-social-security\/\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/O2tuE8fr4b\">https:\/\/t.co\/O2tuE8fr4b<\/a><br>A mountain of government payments buries the myth of American self-reliance<\/p>&mdash; The Good Shepherd (@HoyasFan07) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/HoyasFan07\/status\/1851729864006553822?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 30, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Payments from government entitlement programs \u2014 transfer payments \u2014 are the fastest-growing major component of citizens\u2019 personal income. Such transfers are the third-largest source of personal income: In 2022, the average citizen received almost as much from government transfers ($11,500)<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=132421\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,209,149,133,676,675,673,584],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-politics","category-americau-s-a","category-economy","category-history","category-medicaid","category-medicare","category-social-security","category-the-u-s-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132421"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132425,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132421\/revisions\/132425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}