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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ahhaha who wrote (63)	9/27/2000 3:12:40 PM
From: M. Frank Greiffenstein	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24758

I don't agree with this at all. No one benefits from government largesse more than they would benefit if they spent the money themselves. If I read Grace correctly, she wasn't making an argument for the moral or economic superiority of government benefits. In simple dollar terms, her statement is correct, the government does spend more on "entitlements" geared towards the middle class. This can be calculated not only in terms of direct subsidies, but also indirect subsidies, e.g., writing off mortage interest and state taxes. Only the middle class makes enough money to get kicked into Schedule C. DocStone

To: ahhaha who wrote (63)	9/27/2000 3:46:54 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24758

I don't agree with this at all. No one benefits from government largesse more than they would benefit if they spent the money themselves. Her claim is essentially that government knows how to spend your money better than you do. Now your reading in what you think I said to expound on your favorite subject. When I pointed up that the middle class were the biggest beneficiaries from social spending I was doing so to point out that the largest percentage of tax dollars spent on social programs goes right back to the middle class, not to the lower 10% as KB had implied (or maybe he was implying that the politicians were saying that to shake us down some more). I was not in any way stating that the government knows how to spend our money better than we do. It's difficult, if not impossible to say if people would spend it more to their benefit. What's a better benefit? Certainly I've heard of enough people going out and blowing that 401k roll out that was suppose to support them in their old age, but then maybe they do it because they know they are gonna get bailed out by the government later. Not unlike those upper middle class seniors (with the lawyers who help them) who impoverish themselves to be eligible for Medicaid. The way I like to look at it is as a very large incentive trap. If you pay in and don't receive back you are getting taken and the sum of what is paid out is going to be billed to you anyway so in order to not get taken you have the incentive to pay in as little as possible and try to receive back as much as possible. Problem is that everyone else is doing the same thing. The trap just gets bigger and bigger until it can no longer be supported by those suckers that haven't figured out they are getting taken. Best way to deal with an incentive trap is to opt out and not play.....if you can.