The October 8th issue of The New Yorker has a great piece by JAMES SUROWIECKI on corporate welfare (link here New Yorker Welfare article)
wherein the author asks the question why Mitt Romney hasn't attacked corporate welfare as zealously as he has attacked individuals who receive government assistance for one reason or another... My views on this topic are both personal. At various times growing up with a single mother, my family received public assistance-subsidized lunch at our public school, food stamps, Social Security survivors benefits after my father died, government subsidized loans and grants that enabled me to attend college and law school...None of this assistance was generous, by any stretch of the imagination...
We still very much lived at the economic margins of society...I have had a job basically since I was 14 (I am 42 now). We didn't have a car. Our home was small, cramped and and cold in the winter (there were only three of us), but it was something.
What infuriates me are people like Romney (whose often touted "illustrious business career" was built primarily on one form of government assistance or another) and Ryan (whose entire existence seems dependent on government largesse) who talk out of both sides of their face (on many topics, but especially this one)--on one side, they decry public assistance for those most in need, while sticking out their hand and smiling on the other side of their face (I am curious, did Romney turn down public money for his campaign?). Individuals who receive public assistance should not be made to feel like pariahs (I certainly did growing up, a mindset that I am still trying to shake to this day). I am certain that ExxonMobile, ethanol farmers, government contractors and even Romney & Ryan don't feel remorse about the tax payer assistance that they have received (and continue to receive).
This is not to say that I believe that lifelong governmental dependency should be a way of life, but knowing what I know about capitalism/free markers (which in fact, are not always so free), our history and socio-economic constraints as well as general human psychology, I am not ready to condemn segments of society that may not have viable alternatives (this isn't victimization, this is the truth).
It is past time that we have a conversation about "entitlement" reform, government spending and tax fairness, but that conversation needs to be much broader than Social Security and Medicare. It should encompass more than the mortgage interest deduction and employer provided health insurance. I agree with Romney that there are plenty of folks who are living off of the government dime. I think that those folks should have their lifeline severely limited, if not pulled completely. But, in my world, those folks are not the 47% of the population that was derided and dismissed by Romney.