{"id":4120,"date":"2013-09-11T19:02:04","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T00:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4120"},"modified":"2013-09-11T15:08:49","modified_gmt":"2013-09-11T20:08:49","slug":"the-united-states-of-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4120","title":{"rendered":"The United States of Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Politicians love to compare the federal government to a typical American family whenever the subject of spending cuts comes up. They argue that families must live within their means and so should the federal government. The argument is ridiculous and akin to comparing apples to airplanes, but it always generates a cheer at political rallies. Over at Wonkblog, Brad Plumer shows how <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2013\/09\/11\/what-if-a-typical-family-spent-like-the-federal-government-itd-be-a-very-weird-family\/\">odd a family might look if it spent like the federal government<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u2013 The Smiths would spend\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2013\/01\/07\/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the-defense-budget-in-charts\/\">20 percent of their income<\/a>, or $10,440 each year, on an arsenal of guns, tanks and drones to defend their house against threats or invade the occasional neighbor over lawn-pesticide disputes and access to the gas station.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 The Smiths would spend\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbpp.org\/cms\/?fa=view&amp;id=1258\">another third of their income<\/a>\u00a0financing retirement and health care for Grandma and Grandpa. Part of that would have been prepaid by money that Grandma and Grandpa socked away while they were working, but\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2013\/02\/18\/have-seniors-really-paid-for-medicare-and-social-security\/\">some of it would be paid for<\/a>\u00a0by the parents and kids who are chipping in.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 Actually, come to think of it, the Smiths spend\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbpp.org\/cms\/?fa=view&amp;id=1258\">nearly half their money<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 43 percent\u00a0\u2014\u00a0operating a massive insurance conglomerate whose main beneficiaries are family members.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The article probably won\u2019t change any minds, but it illustrates how lazy and inaccurate some analogies can be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Politicians love to compare the federal government to a typical American family whenever the subject of spending cuts comes up. They argue that families must live within their means and so should the federal government. The argument is ridiculous and akin to comparing apples to airplanes, but it always generates a cheer at political rallies. <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4120' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wonkery","category-15-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-14s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4121,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4120\/revisions\/4121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}