Friday, March 2, 2012

Middle-Class Welfare State Is Invisible by Design: Ezra Klein


What is a government program? And are you on one right now? Those are the questions Cornell University political scientist Suzanne Mettler has been posing.

For her book “The Submerged State,” she asked a scientifically selected sample of 1,400 Americans whether they had ever used a government social program. Only 43 percent copped to having done so. Then she read off 21 social programs, such as Medicare (FFSOMED) and the home-mortgage interest deduction, and asked the same question again: Have you ever used a government social program? This time, 96 percent said yes, in fact, they had.

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