“The tax expenditure concept still strikes many Americans as wrongheaded, so it’s worth pausing here for the benefit of readers who have objections. A common complaint is that the concept somehow assumes that government “owns” all your income before doing you the favor of letting you keep part of it. Certainly politicians often behave as if that is true, but such a notion really has nothing to do with the concept of tax entitlements. Instead, the presumptions behind the concept is simply that, as a people, we have decided on a general rate of taxation. When certain groups secure exemptions to that general rate, everyone else has to pay more. And when that happens, it’s no different, fiscally or morally, than when government just sends benefit checks to certain favored groups.”

I am not making moral judgments on veterans benefits or military pensions, however, I believe it is a fact that a large majority of them are paid out to the middle class.

I believe that Mr. Longman’s term “Middle Class Welfare State” refers to any financial subsidy or entitlement that is handed out by the government to certain groups or classes of people. His point is that the list is endless and that we as Americans have come to think of it as something we are due. While I mentioned veterans and military pensions because I was thinking of the war in Iraq, there are also farm subsidies, subsidies to homeowners, social security, disability and the list goes on. It is also a fact that most of these go to middle and upper class Americans.

I am not making moral judgments on it, I am simply stating that all of these are a fact of life and I think your comments illustrate his point that we as Americans feel that we are entitled to them.

Are we? That’s for better minds than mine to determine but I do think that the day is coming when we are going to have to pay the piper. Like most Americans, some of these are built into my budget and I would be hard put to budget without them.

Also,Social Security is “continually being bailed out”? No, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that is bankrupt because the money collected for it is being used for things it was never intended for and the money is used as if it is part of the general funds available to Congress.