Most Beneficiaries Of Government Programs Don’t Know They Use Government Programs

By on August 4, 2011 in News 40

Via Sociological Images, an excerpt from research by Cornell professor Suzanne Mettler in which Americans were asked whether they had ever benefited from or participated in specific federal programs. As it turns out, a large number of people who have benefited from various federal programs or policies do not recognize themselves as having done so. This reveals something about people’s attitudes and framing, perhaps about whom they think government social programs “help”:

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  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    Amen…there’s nothing less funny than an older couple of Boomers, one a teacher and the other an ex military officer and government employee…bitching about the perils of socialism and the evils of government meddling in peoples lives…while raking in a lifetimes worth of checks from the state and federal government…their whole lives sheltered and fed and paid by tax dollars…suddenly furious that someone might touch their Medicare/medicaid/social security/retirement benefits. They sing and chant for the destruction of all the above…then look like poleaxed steers when it bites them in the ass.

    I call them “Aunt and Uncle”…and I love them…but for the sake of keeping the peace I avoid saying “What the fuck did you think would happen? If you spend ten years yelling for people to burn down houses…and someone burns down yours…maybe you should be looking at yelling something different?”

  • Anonymous

    I dunno. Seems to be something wrong with this study. Is it _really_ possible that 1/3 of the people on welfare, food stamps, medicaid and in subsidized housing _really_ believe they have never used a government social program? They have to go to government offices to sign up in the first place and the benefits are issued by the government… and nearly _half_ the people on social security? REALLY?

    if this is accurate, people are even more stupid than I realized. And considering how pessimistic I already am, that’s really saying something. How did we ever drag ourselves out of the primordial slime?

  • Bigdickmegaherz

    The GI BILL is not a a goddamn government program, Its something I paid for. It says right on my contract that it is not a student loan or entitlement but a purchased program option. Don’t throw me in with the pell and map granters, I served 5 years over seas and paid $200 a month for this shit. I earned it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1320729293 Brent Skinner

    You’re absolutely right. As well, any argument that claims the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction is a government program, in the spirit of what a government program is typically thought of to be, is specious. I love the Orwellian tactics here, whereby what is essentially a tax deduction is labeled a government program. Priceless.

  • Edd

    A similar thing happened here in the UK last year. The press were constantly harping on about welfare and invariably you’d get middle-class (as in quite well-off Daily Mail-reading middle-class) people moaning how they get NOTHING from the government and cuts should be made. When you look at the large welfare bill in the UK you find out that most of it goes either into pensions & related credits, tax credits for working parents and the amount given to the unemployed is relatively small. Hence its hard to make big cuts without it biting the middle-class.

    So we get a new Conservative-Lib Dem government and one of the first things they do is chop tax credits & child benefit for people earning over £44000 (about $70000) – the average UK wage is about £26000. UPROAR from the middle-class. Then they put course fees up for university from £3000 to £9000 a year which (again) will hammer the same group – or at least their teenagers. Furthermore they’re pushing through cuts to housing benefit (rent subsidy for poor people). Hurrah, cuts for the ‘scroungers’ say the middle-class. Then they realise that the beneficiaries of housing benefits are mainly private landlords – the government cash goes straight to them who in the main are… the successful middle-classes.

    Of course a big chunk of our middle-class also forget about the free healthcare they get and all those roads they drive on and the infrastructure that lets them fly off to Europe and the schools that educate their kids. They also forget that a big chunk of them work either for the public sector or for private companies that sell most of their products to the public sector.

    Nope, all the people who get money off the government are ‘scrounging off hard-working taxpayers’.

    So cluelessness is something not limited to our American cousins.

  • Anonymous

    ehhhh what are you getting versus what you paid? Would a program like that exist without the government? And the post 9/11 GI BILL is certainly a program but I know that’s not what you are talking about.

  • Anonymous

    A tax break puts money in your pocket does it not? Without the break that money would be statutorily obligated…the point is that more people benefit from government grants and tax exemptions then they realize….lets not delve into the highways and bridges etc.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jason.wilczak Jason Wilczak

    Globalism is the only way to resolve the issues of our planet.  Read my article here and let me know what you think: http://temporalrelativity.blogspot.com/2011/08/day-14-globalism.html

  • Anonymous

    The GI Bill is not an ‘entitlement’, but it is most definitely a government program.  You certainly earned it, you were given a contract for it, but the US Government still looks at it as a ‘social program’ enhancement they added, which they can stop allocating to in the future, if they choose.  I’m just saying…it isn’t the author of the study skewing things, so much as the Federal government.

  • Bigdickmegaherz

    What am I getting versus what I paid.. not fuckin much!? If I worked 14 hour days for 5 years on the civie side I would have been rolling in money and wouldn’t have owed shit for college. I used my GI bill and I still got raped. They don’t pay OT in the military, you make roughly 3$ an hour if you look at what you work…and what they pay for (3 years of college and not 4)… and thats not shit.. and that 911 GI bill sucks… I wouldn’t wipe my ass with it…  People act like the GI Bill is a hand out, literally its the least they can… the very least.. If troops were paid even min hourly wages the US would have been bankrupt 30 years ago.

  • Andrew

    The military is a government program.

  • Anonymous

    dude I know how the army is I’ve been there too, never said it was a handout just that it is a government supported program. As far as it being the least they can do I am in total agreement.

  • Anonymous

    European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet also said he expects the central bank to hold on to an accommodative monetary-policy stance, and sees a slowdown in economic growth. The euro tumbled on Trichet’s commentary amid concerns interest rates that are held lower low in the longer-term will negatively affect demand for the currency. Also, the ECB held its benchmark interest rate steady at 1.5%, as was expected.

  • Rsknk

    I hear you.  Nothing better than a liberal trying to justify his/her existence.

  • Anonymous

    Great insight, genius.   Congress and the IRS have allowed such a deduction over all those years through legislation. Technically, it’s not a program like a Pell grant, but all deductions are given by the government and don’t just appear. Your outrage is misdirected.

  • Anonymous

    Reality has a liberal bias.

  • Anonymous

    lol and again i agree with you….*sigh/lol*

  • Anonymous

    sorry man, that blog post you linked was…..terribly unenlightened. full of mistakes ranging from issues of human geography, history (contextual and objective), and economy.

    not really worth shilling until you do a serious re-write.

  • Anonymous

    You had the misfortune of being alive when certain members of Congress are so tight fisted as to deny veterans the right to a free education as was provided when I was your age. Be pissed at them, not at the rest of us. If I had my way, we’d return to the old GI bill when tuition was paid for, but it takes only one Senator to stop any such a bill from passing.

  • emperorreagan

    Good luck finding a job that would let you work 14 hour days for 5 years on the civilian side and bank tons of overtime, especially if you went in straight out of high school.  The unemployment rate for 18-24 year olds is around 25%, so there aren’t a lot of plum jobs out there to be had.

    The GI Bill was originally passed because the government didn’t want a repeat of WWI.  Vets came home and no one wanted to hire them.  Veteran groups ultimately marched on Washington because the unemployment rates were high.  A bunch of unhappy, unemployed veterans is not what the government wants on its hands.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_ArmyThe GI Bill serves two specific purposes currently, in addition to the social purposes behind subsidized loans, student loan tax credits, and grants:1. It’s a recruitment tool.2. An acknowledgement, though not stated explicitly, that they aren’t actually giving you skills that will enable you to succeed in the private sector – a private sector that may or may not want to hire you.  It’s a lifeline, though not much of one, to keep you off the unemployment or homeless numbers.  It’s better than having thousands of listless veterans wondering what to do next after the military is through burning through their youth.Whether you or anyone else believes that money is earned or not is irrelevant.  The government provides it because it serves their purposes, not because you’ve earned it.  It’s a comparatively cheap program for the ends it serves (especially since ~30 percent never use it).  

  • emperorreagan

    One could probably make an argument that the interest deduction has been more of a boon to banks and realtors than it has to individuals.  The interest deduction showed up in 1913 and wasn’t intended to encourage home ownership, though people have come to paint it that way.  

    Home ownership rates have increased since then, but that is more thanks to Fannie Mae and the 30 year mortgage rather than the deduction.  

    On the whole, government has encouraged borrowing and inflated home prices rather than true home ownership – in 1913 more people bought their homes outright because they were more in line with the incomes of the time than today’s homes.  Today, a lot of people are just paying rent to a bank instead of a landlord or other company because they will never actually own the home they live in.

  • Anonymous

    I want to say “I don’t know if that’s reassuring or depressing” but honestly, I do know. It’s just depressing.

    …maybe because it means there’s no place for us to flee to…

  • Anonymous

    Actually, the least they _could_ do is nothing. Just dump you in the gutter when you get back. Or worse than nothing, they could be paying you even less while taxing you even more. But they know that’s more costly to them in the long run than what little they grudgingly do, for the reasons emporerreagan points out above.

  • Bigdickmegaherz

    Yea Well I’m thirty, I joined ten years ago and served 7 years. When I joined I gave up a high paying factory job to serve, one that had all the OT I could want because the economy wouldn’t tank for 5 years. SO yea, I definitely could have made the money provided to me 4 times over. Whether or not I earned it is mute point huh? My ass, I worked my self to death, I did my time. Anything you work for to get is earned, common sense.  

    Quit citing frigging wikipedia as a source, its unreliable. The GI Bill I used is the Montgomery GI Bill made in the 1980s, there is a more to situation than some evil conspiracy. Maybe you would know that if you attended a Non-commissioned officer academy like me, instead of googles academy of web search. So before you try to tell me how it is because I haven’t been there, I’ve been there and got the Tshirt. Talk down to your world of warcraft buddies kid. I don’t want your opinion on adult shit if you were in gradeschool in 99.

  • Anonymous

    damn dude. Yeah obviously they could also liquify your flesh and use it for chow. I understand that everything the military does is to their benefit and their benefit alone but jesus tap dancing christ they SHOULD treat vets well as they did nothing but the bidding of their country and that includes everyone, if you pay taxes then you are just as culpable as the soldier firing that weapon or the general ordering him to do so.

  • Bigdickmegaherz

    lol

  • Anonymous

    Should and could are not the same thing. They _should_ be doing a hell of a lot more than they are. That’s not the point. The point is, it’s still a government-administered program that participants benefit from that would not exist if the government didn’t offer it. Doing nothing and dropping you on the curb, _that_ would be if it wasn’t a government social program.

  • Yourannoying

    Mehh hee he haw haw… so funny. Yea… in the way it existed before the government and its leaders assisted in the drafting of the government documents that found our existence… so…yea like your mom is a Andrew program by that logic… makes sense..

  • Anonymous

    Besides being annoying yourself, can i venture inerudite?

  • emperorreagan

    I used wikipedia as a source for the veterans marching on Washington after WWI.  If you clicked on the link, you would see the reference.  You could search for the Bonus army elsewhere if you like and the riot in 1932 if you want a better search.  This is the internet, though, so I don’t intend to pull NY Times articles from the time period.  Or if you had any notion of the history of the past 150 years, you might not need me to point it out.

    Here’s a source from the VA about the debate around the original GI bill.  http://www.gibill.va.gov/gi_bill_info/history.htm  Or you can read the original debates about the bill.  Or you can pull your own newspaper articles from the time.  There is no conspiracy – the motivations behind the bill are in the public record.

    Whether you think your worked hard for it is, indeed, moot.  It’s a benefit given by the government because thousands of homeless, unemployed veterans are an embarrassment at best and a threat to national stability at worst. Sure, the Army told you it was a benefit, just like healthcare and everything else.  But it’s a benefit offered to support the social policy of the United States.  It’s not the merit of anything you did that earns the benefit – it’s because it supports the aims of the Federal government. 

    If you read anything about the last debate when they revised the bill – the military was worried that it would be too generous and hurt retention rates.  It’s a carrot to get suckers in and an assistance to people when they choose to get out, but they certainly don’t want it to be large enough to encourage soldiers to pursue a different career.  

    In 1999, if I had cared to live my life according to the whims of the military establishment, I’d have been at the Air Force Academy.

  • Yourannoying

    That’s an antediluvian word you used there… are you old?

  • Bigdickmegaherz

    Once again if your brain is disconnected.. I AM TALKING ABOUT THE MONTGOMERY AND 911 GI BILL NOT THE ORIGINAL WORLD WAR TWO GI BILL THAT EXPIRED IN THE 1950s!!

    The Bonus army has as much to do with the Montgomery G.I. Bill as the war of 1812. Just because G.I. Bill is in the name you thinks its the same thing. Google does not an expert make. Maybe I know because military educational counseling was part of my job description as an NCO. Montys G.I. bill was a cold war baby and the politics of it are far too complex to sum up in a day.

    Your implying the opinion former Secretary Robert Gates and McCain on the 911 G.I. bill, represent the values and intentions of a program started 30 years ago? Riiiight… as for the reason the 911 GI was invented, it was to honor those who joined the Global War on terror regardless of the opine of the former people. Your giving skewed half-truths and expecting me and others to accept it. B.S. I was well aware of their “carrot comments” and I wrote McCain and Gates a hateful letter however they do not represent the entirety of the military triangle.
    I don’t even know why you said you would have been in the Airforce academy? What are you implying? Your grades were good enough to get in? It takes more than that. Hell, getting an invitation to apply at a service academy is far from graduating or even receiving a commission. Congratulations, you thought about doing something once… what the fuck? I’ve got a invitation to apply at west point in my file too, I didn’t I went enlisted…at least I did something. One time I thought about taking out main land china by myself in 84, but I didn’t….

  • Bigdickmegaherz

    To lighten the mood I thought Id tell you… I shit my pants. Everyone makes mistakes… No really though.. I did I thought it was gas. 

  • Andrew

    I wasn’t making a joke.  The army that existed before the U.S. government did was not the military we have now.  The current military is funded by tax dollars, organized by congress’s law, and led by the president, so it is a government program.

  • Anonymous

    my age of maturity has a high probability of being higher than your actual age.

  • emperorreagan

    The specifics have changed.  The reasons the government is willing to provide the benefit hasn’t changed from what I stated were the two big reasons.

    I had the grades and more importantly the family connections to get in, had I wanted to go.  I only stated that because you implied that being at some NCO academy was a big deal and that I was in grade school in 1999.  You chose to make less money and to go into the military – and you seem a little bitter about it.  I chose not to go into the military, despite the pressure and connections from my father and grandfather.  I’m very happy I didn’t, because I had and still have no interest in military culture.

    Academies or not is irrelevant when it comes to the reasons the government provides a benefit.  And the way the Army explains the benefit is pretty irrelevant when it comes to the true political and social reasons that the federal government would choose to provide a GI Bill.  Or Montgomery GI Bill.  Or Post 9/11 GI Bill.  You couldn’t find a more biased source – even on wikipedia.   

  • Anonymous

    You might as well let it go. He’s obviously not actually reading or comprehending anything you say because to do so would mean admitting he benefited from what is obviously a government program with social aims. He’s one of the statistics in the original article here.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PP27FOUX7TCQ5ORPKUWAT2R5V4 Ray

    I don’t understand what the argument is about. The Montgomery
    and Post 9/11 GI Bill come from the
    government and thus its a government program. It doesn’t matter if it’s the most
    worthless program in existence, that’s not the issue. The money taken from your
    pay check that went to the GI Bill came from the government. No one is saying
    that the GI Bill is in the same category as pell grants other than that it
    comes from the government.

  • Bigdickmegaherz

    Lets agree to disagree. Emperorreagan Good DAY TO YOU!

  • http://twitter.com/jasonpaulhayes jasonpaulhayes

    “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No.” Craig T. Nelson .. Actor and Not Very Smart Person.