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It’s Not Billionaires Robbing The Middle Class, It’s Welfare Recipients

By 2023, government transfer payments to the lowest income quintile totaled roughly 70 percent of their average cash income.

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Americans have long heard class warfare rhetoric coming from Democrats — attacks on “the 1 percent,” “millionaires and billionaires,” and similar variations. But this type of rhetoric ignores the welfare state’s perpetual growth.

A recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis illustrates this point. Since 1979 — the year before the “Reagan Revolution,” which supposedly shrank the size of government — government programs and payments to low-income households have continued to grow. By 2023, government transfer payments to the lowest income quintile (i.e., the lowest 20 percent of the population by income) totaled approximately $20,000 per household, or roughly 70 percent of their average cash income of about $28,500 per household.

The CBO report examined trendlines in both income and government transfer payments from 1979 through 2023. Looking at income before transfer payments and income after transfer payments provides two very unique pictures, as one slide illustrates:

Income for the top quintile (i.e., the highest-earning 20 percent of households) has grown steadily throughout. But after accounting for government transfer payments, the income for the bottom quintile has grown much faster than the middle three quintiles (i.e., the middle class). That growth has come from a........

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