STARKVILLE —
The “me” generation has now become the “pay me my entitlement” generation.
If you were born between 1946 and 1964, you are one of 76 million Americans born in that span now careening toward retirement and their so-called “golden years.” Actually, net immigration raises the actual number of “baby boomer” age individuals in the U.S. to 79.6 million.
Of those 79.6 million Americans, some 1.386 million are Mississippians, according to Census data — 696,439 men and 689.684 women.
Based on election results over the last 20 years, it is increasingly evident that the political message that resonates with the majority of Mississippians is the notion of a smaller, less intrusive government that both spends and taxes less. Yet at the same time, there remains an expectation that government maintain quality schools, reliable infrastructure, readily available health care and public safety.
Oh, yes, and Baby Boomers want the Social Security and Medicare to which we believe — after years of having the federal government take money from our paychecks to fund those programs without debate or discussion — that we are entitled. Then there’s Medicaid, the other bedrock of public health care.
Those entitlement programs present the rub. In 2030, one in five Americans will be over age 65. When I was born in 1959, there were about five working Americans for every retiree. By 2025, it is forecast that there will be only two workers for every American retiree. When I was in high school in the mid-1970s, federal entitlement spending on Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare represented 25 percent of federal spending.
Today, those programs take up 40 percent of federal spending and within 10 years, that percentage will rise to 50 percent. For Mississippians, the fact that in 2011 some 49 percent of the state’s total budget came from federal funds should be particularly significant.
Federal funding is critical for Mississippi’s health care, public education, transportation, and for many, basic subsistence in the poorest state in the union. It’s half the state’s total budget.
States like Mississippi with a high dependence on federal funds as a percentage of total state budgets will face undeniable fiscal consequences if federal spending is curtailed to the extent necessary to confront the massive structural federal deficits dictated by the approach of the baby boomers claiming their entitlements in their retirement years.
Mississippians receive exponentially more from the federal government in spending then they pay in federal taxes. That fundamental disparity looms as the fundamental consequence of Congress eventually facing up to decades of irresponsibility in their handling of the funds collected from taxpayers to fund entitlements and the highly political expansions of those entitlements with no corresponding revenue source to pay for those expansions.
Less federal spending in Mississippi translates into questions deeper than the obvious ones about just who pays for Granny’s nursing home bill or Grandpa’s hospital stay. A smaller federal government translates into less government services and an examination of how much government state and local taxpayers are willing to fund.
For every dollar Mississippians pay in federal taxes, they receive $2.47 in federal spending. What happens if federal spending decreases in Mississippi? The logical results are either significantly less services or higher state and local taxes to maintain current levels of services — and there’s not much more on the menu from which we can choose.
(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com)
Columns
Entitlements, less government
- Columns
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Columns Headlines
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
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