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By KEN WYSOCKY | Fall 2021
State unemployment benefits extended, despite a rebounding economy and businesses struggling to find workers amidst a severe labor shortage. Expanded federal child-tax credits — $3,600 per child — and larger Obamacare subsidies that even middle-class families with substantial incomes are eligible to receive.
“Free” two-year, community-college educations and universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds. The largest increase in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) in the program’s history. Guaranteed income proposals under consideration in Milwaukee, Madison and Wausau (see story on guaranteed income) and dozens of other cities across the country.
It’s a mind-boggling blowout of federal, state and local benefits, new and expanded, in fulfillment of an ardent progressive’s wildest dreams of cradle-to-grave dependence on government.
How governments intend to pay for all of it remains murky at best. But one thing is crystal clear: The American Dream, based for centuries on rugged individualism — citizens bootstrapping their way to financial success — is getting plowed under by an all-grasping government nanny state.
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