Unscientific Analysis - Unsurprising Result

[101A]

Quickly via Google looked up the number of people in this country who receive the following (in millions):

Social Security: 60
Medicaid: 50
Unemployment: 10

...and added the total number of:

Federal Employees: 15
State & Local Employees: 20

Then I looked up

The population of the United States: 307

That gave me a grand total of 155,000,000 people receiving significant, personal, direct benefit or compensation from the government. (didn't count food stamps/welfare because of overlap - again, not even close to scientific.) That is, ironically 50.4%.

Enough to keep it that way.

[boutons_deux]

20% of household income comes from govt

I've seen estimates that 75%+ of the US citizens get govt money in some way or form.

That's why everybody wants to cut govt spending, except the govt spending coming to them.

Like everybody hates Congress, except the Congressmen they voted for.

The military is currently firing up its grovelling, lying campaign to keep the MIC swimming in our $Ts.

[ElNono]

Interesting that only 3% of the population receive unemployment benefits when the unemployment rate is closer to 10%. Ultimately, that 3% is enough of a swing to not keep it that way.

[mavs>spurs]

the poorest only get a pinch of state's income when the gov employees take a lionshare, the government should be 1/10 its current size but laying off gov employees would only increase the unemployment rate so let it just be it tbh. there ain't no true fairness in humans world imo, even america isn't

[boutons_deux]

"gov employees take a lionshare"

false. Show where gov employee salaries are the "lionshare", and of what?

[Wild Cobra]

Quickly via Google looked up the number of people in this country who receive the following (in millions):

Social Security: 60
Medicaid: 50
Unemployment: 10

...and added the total number of:

Federal Employees: 15
State & Local Employees: 20

Then I looked up

The population of the United States: 307

That gave me a grand total of 155,000,000 people receiving significant, personal, direct benefit or compensation from the government. (didn't count food stamps/welfare because of overlap - again, not even close to scientific.) That is, ironically 50.4%.

Enough to keep it that way.
I'm curious where you got those numbers. I find 2010 federal employment (http://fehb.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp) to be 4,444,000. If you add 2011 Postal Employees (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service) (not paid by tax dollars) then you get 5,018,000 federal employees.

[101A]

I'm curious where you got those numbers. I find 2010 federal employment (http://fehb.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp) to be 4,444,000. If you add 2011 Postal Employees (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service) (not paid by tax dollars) then you get 5,018,000 federal employees.

I was curious after you posted this as well, so I had to check my browser history. I found this:

http://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/09fedfun.pdf

I looked the top line where it listed "Total - All functions" and saw the following number: 15,105,511,892

I didn't count digits, and entered "15" for number of federal employees.

As it turns out, that number is 15 Billion, and refers to the total payroll of Federal employees.

Your number is correct, meaning the OP is irrelevant.

Keep me honest, WC.

[LnGrrrR]

Another problem with 101A's original post is that he assumed that no one fell into more than one category. I'm pretty sure that most people with medicaid also fall under the social security bucket.

I also think it's faulty to group "people working for the gov't" with "people receiving benefits from the gov't".

[scott]

Interesting that only 3% of the population receive unemployment benefits when the unemployment rate is closer to 10%. Ultimately, that 3% is enough of a swing to not keep it that way.

Statistically, a misleading comparison.

You can't compare 3% of Americans getting unemployment benefits to an unemployment rate of 10% because they have different denominators (the unemployment rate is # of people unemployed divided by number of people in the labor force whereas the labor force is the portion of the working age population that is employed or actively seeking work).

The current approximation of unemployed persons is 13.9 million, so if 10 million are receiving benefits then we have a beneficiary rate of 72% as opposed to the 30% it appears to be on the surface when you initially read your sentence.

Just thought I'd clarify.