Everyone knows the famous Chinese proverb: Give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime. So why does the federal government spend so much money on giving away fish and so little on teaching people how to fish? Because Democrats want people to depend on government so that they will vote to re-elect them. Think of all the redistributive programs we have to help people. The minimum wage, food stamps, housing subsidies, free cell phones, and Medicaid are just a few of the over eighty federal means-tested programs designed to help the poor. Social Security and Medicare redistribute income to the elderly. Federal disability insurance helps people who are too disabled to work. In total, the federal government redistributes about $2.5 trillion per year, which buys a lot of votes. In contrast, policies that aim to create self-sufficiency are significantly fewer. Job training programs are the obvious example, as they are the epitome of teaching a person to fish. Yet the federal government spends only around $10 billion on job training programs which is less than one-half of one percent of the amount spent on redistributive programs. Other programs that qualify as self-sufficiency increasing are health savings accounts and private retirement programs (such as IRA and 401(k) accounts). These are large-scale programs but no federal spending is dedicated toward them unless one believes in counting the tax breaks they enjoy. If you count that cost, it is around $500 billion, or one-fifth of the amount that is redistributed.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
