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A Nation of Moochers: America's Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing, by Charles J. Sykes
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Have we reached a tipping point where more Americans depend on the efforts of others than on their own? Are we becoming a nation of moochers?
In A Nation of Moochers, Charles J. Sykes argues that we are already very close to that point, if we have not already crossed the line: from the corporate bailouts on Wall Street, to enormous pension, healthcare, and other entitlement costs, to questionable tax exemptions for businesses and individuals, to the alarming increases in personal default and dependency, the new moocher culture cuts across lines of class, race, and private and public sectors.
A Nation of Moochers explores the shift in the American character as well as the economy. Much of the anger of the current political climate stems from the realization by millions of Americans that they are being forced to pay for the greed-driven problems of other people and corporations; increasingly, those who plan and behave sensibly are being asked to bail out the profligate. Sykes' argument is not against compassion or legitimate charity, but distinguishes between definable needs and the moocher culture, in which self-reliance and personal responsibility have given way to mass grasping after entitlements, tax breaks, benefits, bailouts, and other forms of feeding at the public trough.
Persuasively argued and wryly entertaining, A Nation of Moochers is a rallying cry for Americans who are tired of playing by the rules and paying for those who don't.
- Sales Rank: #962153 in Books
- Published on: 2013-04-16
- Released on: 2013-04-16
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.14" h x .89" w x 5.95" l, .60 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
Review
“Charlie Sykes has hit another home run. The author of Profscam and A Nation of Victims takes aim at America's growing culture of entitlement and delivers a fusillade as hilarious as it is sobering. Sykes shows in devastating detail how we have slipped from being a nation of independent men and women to being a nation of moochers, happy to feed on the labors of others. A Nation of Moochers is partly the report of a cultural pathologist, partly the tough-love prescription of a skilled social physician. Sykes outlines the nature and depth of our malady and expertly lays out the recovery plan. Buy it. Read it. Everyone not part of the welfare-industrial complex will be glad you did.” ―Roger Kimball, author of Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Politicized Our Higher Education and The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America
“Charlie Sykes' A Nation of Moochers provides a much-needed wakeup call for a nation approaching two perilous tipping points: a moral one and a fiscal one. With our country facing unprecedented challenges and stark political choices, principled leaders will benefit from Sykes' clear vision, keen insight and intellect. If we're serious about getting our nation back on track, then we would be wise to follow the lessons laid out in A Nation of Moochers.” ―Paul Ryan, Member of Congress
“Brilliant… A nation of moochers really does encapsulate our problem about a schizophrenic electorate that understands that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but still wants to get the free candy.” ―Michelle Malkin (conservative blogger and author)
About the Author
CHARLES J. SYKES is senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and a talk show host at WTMJ radio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today and is the author of six previous books: A Nation of Victims, Dumbing Down Our Kids, Profscam, The Hollow Men, The End of Privacy, and 50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
A NATION OF MOOCHERS
We are all born moochers; whether we choose to remain so determines our character and our future. All we have to lose is our dependency.
Is America becoming a country where the irresponsible and grasping increasingly live off of those who work, save, invest, and otherwise play by the rules? Have we reached a tipping point where more Americans are relying on the efforts of others rather than their own?
Are we becoming a nation of moochers?
We are very close to that point if we have not already crossed the line. From the corporate bailouts on Wall Street to the declining stigmas on default and dependency, the new moocher culture cuts across lines of class, race, and private and public sectors. Members of the middle class are increasingly as likely to become moochers as the poor; CEOS are as likely to belly up to the trough as the underprivileged; and the BlackBerry has emerged as a more effective tool for mooching than a tin cup. In the Great Bailout, an expensively educated, richly compensated, elaborately insulated, politically powerful, and well-connected elite toyed with the nation’s wealth and bailed themselves out at the expense of millions of waitresses, steamfitters, shopkeepers, schoolteachers, farmers, retirees—and their children and grandchildren—in what may turn out to be the greatest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.
Momentum
Moocher Nation is not driven by a coherent ideology or even a consistent approach to dealing with either need or “fairness.” What it has is … momentum.
More programs of dependency generate more reliance on ever more and varied handouts, as the habit of dependency becomes ingrained and increasingly attractive to others. Subsidies breed subsidies; pork inspires pork (especially if it can masquerade as stimulus); tax credits multiply like bacteria; and lobbyists swarm at the prospect of congressional handouts. The explosion of bailouts and handouts creates its own dynamic: How can you say no to would-be moocher A when B and C are getting mountains of federal cash? How can politicians turn down farmers when the bankers are fattening at the trough; or plead for fiscal restraint to Main Street when Wall Street is awash in OPM (Other People’s Money)? One CEO who jumps on a Gulfstream jet to fly to Washington to wring a few billion dollars from compliant senators inspires dozens, maybe hundreds, of other businessmen to book planes, trains, and limousines to get their own slice of somebody else’s American Dream.
The stigma of dependency—being on the dole—still runs deep in American culture, certainly far deeper than in Great Britain or France, where students and pensioners take to the streets at the merest whiff of a suggestion that they might lose one of their cherished benefits. But it is not inexhaustible. The stigma has been all but erased in some central cities where the long lines that form even at the rumor of free stuff have become testaments to the pervasiveness of the moocher culture, a way of life passed from generation to generation.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure of mooching issues forth armies of social workers, caring professionals, caseworkers, program officers, bureaucrats, advocates, activists, and nonprofits, who see it as their mission to ease the transition of taxpayer dollars into the hands of the “disadvantaged,” or at least the well-connected. Every crisis, every natural disaster or financial setback, becomes another occasion for expanding the size of the moocher state. Each cause has its own symbols of need and woe and justification for their own comfortable jobs as agents of the moocher culture: the deprived child, the bereft farmer, the impoverished oldster—but the message is always the same: more. Says the Tax Foundation’s Scott Hodge: “Every marketing guru will tell you that people love free stuff and they will take as much as they can get whether they need it or not. But for a nation, this is a recipe for disaster.”1
Human nature being what it is, politicians throughout the ages have understood that it is far easier and more popular to hand out bread and circuses, entitlements, and freebies than it is to take them away. Promises, even if they are unaffordable, tend to win more votes than truth telling, especially if that means delivering the bad news that there is no more free lunch and that government workers might have to contribute more to their own pensions.
Scenes of public employees besieging state capitols in Wisconsin and Ohio to protect their bloated benefits and union power are likely a preview of the ferocity with which the entitled will fight to keep their spot at the public trough.
Always More
There is an inexorable quality to the new culture. Regardless of how much has already been done or whether those efforts have succeeded or failed, advocates continue to press for ever greater efforts by the government to help the downtrodden. By definition, whatever has been or is being or will be done is insufficient: After trillions of dollars spent on the War on Poverty, more is urgently required, even if that means continually redefining poverty. But it is one thing to erect a safety net for the needy, and quite another to provide a soft down-filled mattress with a taxpayer-funded mint on the pillow and minibar privileges.
Some of these developments can be dismissed as artifacts of the deep recession, but the loss of the stigma associated with default and dependency may also mark a decisive shift in the American ethos and character. The Great Recession of 2007 saw the destruction of millions of jobs and vastly increased the numbers of Americans reliant on government. But the growth in dependency predated the deluge and Washington used the crisis as a pretext to further shrink the private sector and expand government dependency. This recession hit hardest those who played by the rules and sharpened the gap between the two Americas: those who had 401(k)s, owned a home they intended to pay for, and worked in the private economy, versus those who lived on government entitlements, deadbeats who defaulted on debts, and companies that benefited from bailouts or massive pork subsidies. All of this raises fundamental issues of fairness. As Oxford University ethicist Henry Shue says, “If whoever makes a mess receives the benefits and does not pay the costs, not only does he have no incentive to avoid making as many messes as he likes, but he is also unfair to whoever does pay the costs.” And philosopher David Schmidtz explains, “To be just is to avoid, as best we can, leaving our neighbors to pay for our negligent choices.”2
But that is precisely what has happened. Much of the anger of recent years stems from the realization by millions of Americans that the story of the ant and the grasshopper is being turned on its head: Increasingly, those who take responsibility are being asked to bail out the profligate.
The milestones are troubling:
• Even as more people became dependent on government, fewer were paying their share of the tab. By tax day in 2010, nearly half of U.S. households paid no federal income taxes. After years of cuts, credits, and outright rebates, 47 percent of households had no net liability at all. A family of four could make up to $51,000 without paying a nickel in federal income taxes.3 Many of them have a “negative tax liability,” which means they get a check from the government.
“The result,” notes the Associated Press, “is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure, and education.”4
• While the top 10 percent of earners now pay around 73 percent of the federal income tax burden, fully 40 percent of individuals actually get more money from the tax system than what they pay in. Rather than sending in a tax payment on April 15, the government actually sends them a check, paid for, of course, by other taxpayers. “In essence,” writes the Tax Foundation’s Hodge, “lawmakers have turned the IRS into an ATM machine for welfare benefits—and ATM now stands for Another Taxpayer’s Money.”5
• There are now more takers than makers in the American economy. As The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore writes, in the United States today, government now employs nearly twice as many people (22.5 million) as work in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). “It gets worse,” notes Moore. “More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers.”6
• Reliance on government has hit an all-time high: By mid-2010, one in six Americans were receiving aid from antipoverty programs.7* For the first time since the Great Depression, Americans took more in government benefits—in the form of unemployment compensation, welfare, and other aids—than they collectively paid in taxes. Government transfer payments swelled to more than $2 trillion, more than the total amount of taxes paid by individual Americans. Not counting government employees, 64.3 million Americans depend on government to pay for food, health, and housing (up from 21.7 million in 1962). The Heritage Foundation’s William Beach and Patrick Tyrell note that someone on government assistance now gets on average more than four times as much taxpayer money per year—$31,950—as he would have in 1962, adjusting for inflation.8* If government employees are added, more than 88 million Americans are now dependent on government for their livelihood—an increase of 163 percent since 1962.9
• Major Wall Street firms and failing car makers were handed hundreds o...
Most helpful customer reviews
65 of 74 people found the following review helpful.
Well Done and Balanced Treatment of our Mooching Culture
By Book Fanatic
When I picked up this book I was afraid it was going to be a tirade against what we traditionally think of as the welfare state - aid to the poor. However, I was pleasantly surprised by Sykes's book. Yes, he does address the traditional welfare underclass in the first part of the book, but the vast majority of the book and its major argument is that a mooching culture is becoming entrenched in every economic class. He seems particularly upset with the mooching of corporations and the middle and upper classes.
The front jacket contains this description: "Sykes's argument is not against compassion or legitimate charity, but distinguishes between definable needs and the moocher culture, in which self-reliance and personal responsibility have given way to mass grasping after entitlements, tax breaks, benefits, bailouts, and other forms of feeding at the public trough. Persuasively argued and wryly entertaining, 'A Nation of Moochers' is a rallying cry for Americans who are tired of playing by the rules and paying for those who don't."
In many ways this is a very disturbing book. Yes, I was basically aware that some of this was going on but I really had no idea to what extent. The examples and trends described in this book are enough to make anyone reel, from progressives to conservatives to libertarians. It made me sick reading it.
This is a quick and easy read but delivers a punch to the stomach if you care about responsibility and justice. I don't see how anyone from any political persuasion can support this nonsense.
This book is 270 pages of text but it reads quickly and easily. Highly recommended.
26 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
Enlightening
By Book Shark
A Nation of Moochers: America's Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing by Charles J. Sykes
"A Nation of Moochers" explores the "mooching" culture, its societal implications and what can be done to curtail it. The book includes countless examples of mooching from many walks of life guaranteed to make your blood pressure rise. Thought-provoking, insightful but misses the mark on some key issues but overall a worthwhile read. This interesting 320-page book is broken out in six parts: Part One. Moocher Nation, Part Two. The Joys of Dependency, Part Three. At the Trough, Part Four. Bailout Madness, Part Five. Middle-Class Suckers and Part Six. What's Fair?
Positives:
1. Straightforward prose. The book is accessible to the masses.
2. Thought-provoking book that covers many political/economical issues of interest.
3. Generally fair and even-handed despite espousing libertarian principles. Mooching goes on at all levels.
4. A good format. The author provides many great quotes and mixes things up to keep the narrative interesting. As an example, a moocher checklist.
5. The problem of dependency, agreed. "More programs of dependency generate more reliance on ever more and varied handouts, as the habit of dependency becomes ingrained and increasingly attractive to others".
6. Sykes makes it very clear, we have become a "moocher" society. Government reliance is at an all-time high. Many compelling examples and many that will make your blood pressure go up. Infuriating at times.
7. Many great facts and tidbits throughout the book. " By tax day in 2010, nearly half of U.S. households paid no federal income taxes. After years of cuts, credits, and outright rebates, 47 percent of households had no net liability at all". Troubling.
8. The problems associated with a culture of mooching. Well argued.
9. One of the main arguments of this book and I wholeheartedly agree, "The whole point of the rule of law, argued Bastiat, was to make sure that plunder was not more rewarding than labor, and therefore its goal should always be to protect property and punish plunder." The assumption of incompetence.
10. The history of moocher nation, when it was born.
11. The problems of poverty. Good stuff.
12. Examples of government waste and fraud. Disturbing and upsetting.
13. Examples of Corporate Welfare even tax credits to moviemakers, say what? Farm subsidies...
14. Crony capitalism. The new Lobbying Class.
15. An interesting look at union abuses. Bloated pensions. Scandals.
16. The mortgage madness. Many books have been written on this topic alone.
17. The inside scoop on the Great Bailout of 2008-2009 and shame on Goldman Sachs.
18. Middle-class examples. Mooching on parents, parents mooching off children and many disturbing examples that clearly show the system is failing.
19. The debt problem.
20. Compassionate Society defined
21. Links worked great!
Negatives:
1. Not once does the author mentions the unconstitutional faith-based initiatives, or as I call it, the ultimate dependency...the dependency on a celestial Santa. Ayn Rand would have agreed with me.
2. The book fails to mention or discuss the ever increasing inequality problem in America. The top 1% owns 40% of all the wealth. I'm not talking about an issue of redistribution, I'm talking about an issue where the superrich have rigged the government to their favor and at the expense of the rest and it's only getting worse.
3. I would put the brunt of the blame for the mortgage crisis squarely on the predatory practices of the banking industry and the lack of government oversight. "As Richard Posner and others have noted, it is one thing to ease the burden of dysfunctional overregulation; it is quite another to use it as a cover for Wall Street to invent bogus new securities that were so lacking in transparency and so fragilely connected to reality that they bordered on the fraudulent."
4. The author doesn't discuss the crass abuses of CEOs, the golden parachutes. As an example, Lehman Brothers was not saved by the government yet the CEO left with a golden parachute worth hundreds of millions of dollars for a failed company!
5. I do have an issue with the book relying many times with the very same organizations that deny scientific consensus. As an example, the Heritage Foundation does not accept global warming and in fact has purposely misinformed the public to benefit oil companies.
6. The book in my view overemphasized "poor" moochers over the even more damaging "economically elite" moochers who have rigged the system to their advantage.
7. Charts would have added value.
In summary, reservations noted I enjoyed the book. I may disagree even strongly on some issues but in general Sykes provides many great examples and backs it up with some sound thought-provoking arguments. I think the general premise is sound though I disagree with some of the principles. Worth the read and keep an open mind. I recommend it!
Further suggestions: "No, They Can't: Why Government Fails - But Individuals Succeed" by John Stossel, "Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget" by David Wessel, "White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You" by Simon Johnson, "The Benefit and The Burden: Tax Reform-Why We Need It and What It Will Take" by Bruce Bartlett, "Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present (Vintage)" by Jeff Madrick, "The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future" by Joseph E. Stiglitz, "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future" by Robert B. Reich, "The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America--and Spawned a Global Crisis" by Michael W. Hudson and "The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity—and What We Can Do About It" by Les Leopold.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
2 very opposite cultures in our society, yet sharing a similar hope
By LD
Parents who grew up during the Depression and WWII were always saying that they did not want their children to be deprived like they were. Dr. Spock's theories were timely for changing the ideas about discipline and beginning the "lets reason with the upset child and talk to him/her as if we are addressing an adult." Opponents issued warnings that spoiled, selfish children would become materialistic, ego-driven adults without self discipline. What used to be called character would disappear.
Well Sykes is taking a close look at how those children and their offspring turned out. He sees 2 very different cultures today. He refers to one as traditional or conservative that believes in principles. An example would be that a person buys what they can afford and are willing to be satisfied. The second group thinks that if you want it, you are entitled to have it, which means it is a right, and if no one will just give it to you, then the government is obligated to provide it free of charge.
Sykes points out that the description of the second group is closely identified with the younger generation. However, many of the Boomers feel this way. In addition, he sees the mindset of many people in both groups thinking, "As long as the money lasts until I die, that is all that matters." Most adults believe that at some point this country will go bust but hope that it will be after their lifetime.
The author discusses 2 kinds of moochers: individual and corporations. If you add up all the money spent on individual moochers, you still would not equal what corporations have finessed in a multitude of schemes. Individuals game the system or falsify their eligibility while corporations own the system.
Unfortunately, Sykes does not mention these moochers: the political class, corporate management, or education administrators.
Whether you agree or not with Sykes you will not quickly forget his 4 step scenario: a want=a need=a right=an obligation.
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