American newspapers are tireless advocates for what are essentially middle class welfare programs: affordable housing, Medicare for all, etc. These proposals won’t help the poor, all of whom are already eligible for taxpayer-funded housing, taxpayer-funded health care (Medicaid), taxpayer-funded food (SNAP), and a taxpayer-funded smartphone.
This union-authored study of pay at the Washington Post may provide some insight:
For the 290 salaried male newsroom employees working at The Post, the median salary is $116,065. For the 284 salaried female newsroom employees, it is $95,595.
(Separate question: if women are less expensive to employ and work just as effectively, why does a profit-oriented guy like Jeff Bezos hire any men at all?)
In other words, it turns out that the folks who author the news in D.C. are earning close to the income limit for affordable housing for a family of 4 in D.C. If they get a pay raise they end up in the slavery zone for an American: not rich enough to afford a decent apartment in a nice area, not poor enough to qualify for any subsidies. The result is an apartment in Rockville or a house in Frederick and 2-3 hours of daily commuting.
So it is possible that they advocate for a planned economy and lavish middle-class handouts for purely altruistic reasons, but this advocacy is also consistent with their personal situation.
Related:
- “Median price for D.C. single-family home grows by double-digit percentage in one year” (keep in mind that the $810,000 median single family home price for the entire District includes quite a few neighborhoods in which a diversity-promoting Washington Post reporter wouldn’t be willing to reside; “thanks, but that neighborhood is just a bit too diverse…”)
Remember that you typically consider only means-tested programs to be welfare. By definition Medicare for all is not means-tested. A great advantage of Medicare for all is that it would eliminate welfare programs such as Medicaid, SCHIP, and the ACA exchanges.
Also, Washington Post employees almost certainly have health insurance provided by their employer.
The old story that the new government program will obsolete old ones so they will be cut and savings will result is used, time after time, to sell giving more and more power and money to bureaucrats. Somehow, right after the new program is launched the promises are forgotten – canceling old programs means there will be bureaucratic losers, and these potential losers will fight and generally make life hard for the reformer-to-be. There’s no gain in that. In reality government programs get canceled only after they became totally embarrassing in their obvious failure so associating with them becomes political poison to higher-ups. So, no one should believe this canard. It is simply more of the old same.
“A great advantage of Medicare for all is that it would eliminate welfare programs such as Medicaid, SCHIP, and the ACA exchanges.”
Is that before or after goats fly and pigs whistle?