What return do taxpayers get on their $$ spent on welfare?

[chknltl]

I recall hearing somewhere that for each dollar spent on welfare we get back more than a dollar pumped into the economy. Is this true and if so where might I find data supporting this?

[Newest Reality]

1. My only source of income

is food stamps and I feed that directly into the local Food Lion. Does that count?

I am a Serf, BTW. I work for a place to live and with not income involved, so I boldly go where you may end-up and I never thought I would be here. At least, my Lords are kind.

[chknltl]

2. Ouch...

I am saddened to hear this. OUR nation needs not be so passionless imo. OTOH, I am seeking data stating that the U.S. taxpayers get a pretty good return on their investment into welfare. I am not sure if I heard this on Thom Hartmann or The Daily Show, or maybe even here in the DU. I would like to add this data to an argument I am preparing.

[Newest Reality]

3. Thanks for acknowledging that!

I live in Virgina. There is no welfare that I know of here. Food stamps, (EBT) keeps me eating while I do my work to have a place to live. I was in IT and have been out of work for almost three years. I was an independent contractor so I did not get any form of unemployment insurance compensation.

I am glad to have a place to stay, but without any family or backup, it remains a tenuous situation that I would not want anyone to endure. Right now, there is no choice about where to go next or what to do with my life. This is simply about survival and nothing more. If that is our future, then it is not a desirable way to live for long.

TV might display another reality, but what I have lived to date is about letting go of all my ideals and expectations and only trying to make it from one day to another. They can talk about terrorist all they want to, but security and a future in this kind of scenario is not much better than being attacked by someone. I have no investment in any outcome, other than a revolution, in that case. What strikes me as most alarming is there are so many others in the very same predicament that I have met.

Our illusions and delusions have to end soon, or we will end before they do. This system is, by no means, working for a vast majority of us. We must all rebel and resort to a revolt while we still can. There is no safety net in many states and homelessness is illegal in many places. That means we are feeding the homeless into the for-profit prison systems to support them.

For many of us, America has become a hell on Earth and we, who are living in that result, are left to wear a virtual scarlet letter that means we have to struggle to retain and maintain our own sanity and perspective while our fellow citizens allow the media and politicians to paint us into meaninglessness and cast us as expendable and without any relevancy to the discourse today.

If you judged our current culture and society by the way it treats its poorest, it would have to be the worst rating possible. America is earning an F in caring for its people across-the-board. That is not a worthy place to be, ethically speaking. It is deplorable!

Who of you will continue to support that and avoid fighting what creates that despicable result? Your everday actions and beliefs are supporting it and you may want to reconsider your place in this dilemma before it comes knocking on your door.

[robinlynne]

5. wow.

[StarsInHerHair]

11. for you

if you have a .99 cent store or a dollar store it might help stretch it out, last week of the month, though, I'm sorry to here of your current conditions.

[robinlynne]

4. I don't know where to find the data but it is true. and obvious if you think about it.

If you give money to people who need it, it is spent right away locally. the economy moves. If you give it, as we do now (tax breaks) to the wealthy, they invest it in the stock market. and not locally. Local economies move small businesses, create employment, etc.

I don't know that welfare, per se, is the good way, but jobs and food stamps for poor and working families is definitely the only way to fix this country's economy. (Along with taxes on the rich, and corporations, and ending the wars.)

[Newest Reality]

9. Could'n that just be

about empowerment?

In other words, give the bailouts to the already rich and empowered, and they retain their wealth and power.

If you give it a National Dividend or bailout to the everyday people, (which seems to be a logical and practical idea in a society manufactured to be one of consumers) they then have more power and choice over their lives. They might feel more secure and comfortable and even, happy. Being empowered means you can choose and do things you want to. Being happier is not good for various industries, like those that produce alcoholic beverages and pharmaceuticals because they profit largely, from the negative results that this culture deals to people. You can add many other profiteers to the list of making money off of harships and dissolution. Lawyers make money of of divorces, etc. Big box stores also make money off of divorces when a household splits up and new things need to be purchased by the spouse leaving the home. I am sure you can go on and on about that if you ask what price misery has and who makes the most from it.

Loss and misery makes money in a debt-based economy where people on the top stand to gain from it in huge amounts. I would propose that a happy and comfortable and secure people would provide far less profit to the rabid vultures who corral and influence us than a world of misery could provide. That is something to keep in mind and look into.

[chknltl]

15. I use a simplistic brain teaser version of this in my arguments:

If you have $2 million to distribute as such: $1 million to an individual who already has many millions of dollars already, the second million is given out @ 1 dollar each to 1 million people who are impoverished. Which million is likely to circulate back into the economy faster?

I pretty much agree with you robinlynne on the method to fix our economy but I feel before this can be done, we first need to find a way to stop the corporate takeover of our government. IMO, our representative government currently appears to represent those with the most cash. Sadly, We The People are a little short on cash these days.

[robinlynne]

17. agreed.

[flor-de-jasmim]

6. What most analysts seem to miss...

is that when everyone has enough to eat and a place to stay, most of them stay off the streets. Theft and looting is down. Where are people to go if they don't have food? if giving food directly to the poor is now illegal?!!! The simple dollar-in, dollar-out calculation is often done by people who have neglected to look at the overall human picture.

[chknltl]

7. Which is why I search for this data

I seek that simplistic 'dollar in dollar out calculation' to bolster an argument. Too many folks I know are still quoting the republican/corporatist talking points these days. I want to have the facts, (data), on my side which I wish to present in a similarly simplistic mode. When they say, "Welfare is 'costing' the American taxpayer too much." I wish to point out that for each dollar spent those same taxpayers receive more than a dollar back. Years ago someone, perhaps Thom Hartmann, presented us with that amount. I think it may have been something like $1.25 in return for each dollar spent.

[dkf]

8. If you actually got $1.25 for every dollar you donated then people would give of their own accord.

Thing is it doesn't necessarily come back to you and most don't see it that way so I'm not sure this works as an argument. Probably the humanity of not letting people starve works better.

[chknltl]

13. Good Point

Most folks I debate this topic with are selfish like that dkf, their brains mired in concrete. "What's in it fer me" never encompasses for them the bigger picture. I know I am not the brightest bulb in the room so this is where I generally fall back to: "...a government of, by and FOR the people...are those less well off than you no longer members of 'We The People'?" This usually shut's them up but does little to convince them of their selfish attitude towards their fellow American.

To me, a government which is 'for' the people does much more than simply cheerlead it's citizenry. It is imo, there to support, to aid and to protect it's citizenry. I believe protecting it's citizens from starvation is equally important as protecting it's citizens from pandemics or even foreign invasions. That we can spend our tax dollars on the world's most mighty military whilst watching our citizenry struggle seems hypocritical to the notion that we have a government 'of by and for' us.

Likely you are right dkf, any arguments supporting the benefits to our nation of a more robust welfare program will be lost on those who simply refuse to believe, regardless of data. Furthermore it appears that the data I sought may be harder to find than I first thought when I posted this question.

[StarsInHerHair]

10. they already know that more good paying jobs=less crime...

did you hear about that Citibank memo, detailing how the top wants to gut America & the entire First World?


"Citigroup Plutonomy Report Part 1 
Oct 16, 2005
- The World is dividing into two blocs - the Plutonomy and the rest.  

The U.S., UK, and Canada are the key Plutonomies - economies powered by the wealthy. Continental Europe (ex-Italy) and Japan are in the egalitarian bloc.
- Equity risk premium embedded in "global imbalances" are unwarranted.  

In plutonomies the rich absorb a disproportionate chunk of the economy and have a massive impact on reported aggregate numbers like savings rates, current account deficits, consumption levels, etc.  
This imbalance in inequality expresses itself in the standard scary "global imbalances". We worry less.
- There is no "average consumer" in a Plutonomy.  
<...>
Indeed, traditional thinking is likely to have issues with most of it.  We will posit that:

1. the world is dividing into two blocs - the plutonomies, where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few, and the rest.  
Plutonomies have occurred before in sixteenth century Spain, in seventeenth century Holland, the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties in the U.S.  
What are the common drivers of Plutonomy?
Disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, 
creative financial innovation, 
capitalist-friendly cooperative governments, 
an international dimension of immigrants and 
overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation, 
the rule of law, and 
patenting inventions.  
Often these wealth waves involve great complexity, exploited best by the rich and educated of the time.          
1. We project that the plutonomies (the U.S., UK, and Canada) will likely see even more income inequality, disproportionately feeding off a further rise in the profit share in their economies, capitalist-friendly governments, more technology-driven productivity, and globalization.
<...>
1. In a plutonomy there is no such animal as "the U.S. consumer" or "the UK consumer", or indeed the "Russian consumer".  
There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the "non-rich", the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.  <...> i.e., focus on the "average" consumer are flawed from the start.
http://www.scribd.com/...
Here's the key part, mentioned in the Moore film, where CitiGroup frets about us pesky "laborers" could some day push-back, that we might demand fair treatment and pay for all our productivity:
Citigroup Plutonomy Report Part 2 
Mar 5 2006
RISKS -- WHAT COULD GO WRONG? 
Our whole plutonomy thesis is based on the idea that the rich will keep getting richer. This thesis is not without its risks. For example, a policy error leading to asset deflation, would likely damage plutonomy. Furthermore, the rising wealth gap between the rich and poor will probably at some point lead to a political backlash. Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth, and the poor a lesser share, political enfrachisement remains as was -- one person, one vote (in the plutonomies). At some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich. This could be felt through higher taxation on the rich (or indirectly though higher corporate taxes/regulation) or through trying to protect indigenous laborers, in a push-back on globalization -- either anti-mmigration, or protectionism. We don’t see this happening yet, though there are signs of rising political tensions. However we are keeping a close eye on developments."


The site has been scrubbed. Then there is the counterpunch article on the new serdom coming to Europe, just like here the WORDS THEY USE HAVE THE OPPOSITE MEANING YOU"D FIND IN A DICTIONARY.

[wickerwoman]

12. I just googled "every $1 spent on food stamps creates"

http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/29/news/economy/stimulus_analysis/index.htm

"For every dollar spent on that program $1.73 is generated throughout the economy, he said."

You can also google "food stamps multiplier effect" for more debate.

Here's a Huffington Post article that goes into more detail about how it works:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-mcnay/the-positive-economics-of_b_173335.html

[chknltl]

14. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

That's what I was looking for wickerwoman. This is likely the very data I may have heard on a Thom Hartmann broadcast a couple of years back. I had forgotten that the data referenced Food Stamps specifically which was why I was having difficulty finding it. It will be added to bolster my future debates on the topic of welfare. Thank you very much for finding this for me. :pals:

[Skittles]

16. I just want to say

I love that pic of Obama - he seems such a natural around children.....I contrast with Dubya, who seemed so awkward around kids and babies