Biden to Union Socialists: You Keep "Barbarians from the Gate"

| Thursday, March 31, 2011 | 0 comments |

Is the U.S. Becoming a Welfare State?

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by Daniel Indiviglio

Uncle Sam has been aggressively increasing Americans' allowance recently. Government entitlement programs have grown to account for 35% of wages, according to a new analysis by Madeline Schnapp, director of macroeconomic research at investment research firm TrimTabs. The magnitude of government assistance has increased in large part due to high unemployment. But she argues that even when unemployment declines, we aren't like to see this percentage drop much.

Here's the key chart from Schnapp, which shows the percentage of social welfare benefits, from programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, as a percentage of total wages and salaries (based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis):

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