Giving and receiving

Mitt Romney’s claim that half of all Americans mooch off the hard-earned tax money of the other half was quickly deconstructed by budget experts. The 47 percent of Americans Romney was pointing his finger at for not paying income tax are mostly either elderly people living on Social Security—who paid income and payroll tax through the years—or low-income families who don’t earn enough money to pay income tax but pay plenty in payroll tax.

Dividing the world into makers and takers is appealing, however. Perhaps that’s because each of us likes to think that we are one of the independent types and have gotten where we are by dint of sheer hard work. We tend to forget how we’ve been helped by others, and therefore many of us are inclined to be suspicious of those who draw on our tax dollars.

Dispelling such a simplistic division, political scientists Suzanne Mettler and John Sides point out that 96 percent of all Americans have benefited financially at some time from a federal government program, whether it be Medicare, student loans, unemployment insurance, the home-mortgage deduction, the business tax break for employee health insurance or the G.I. Bill. (And that’s just counting direct or indirect transfers of money, not the benefits of roads, bridges and other government-funded projects.) All of us turn out to be takers and givers.