The "submerged state" and its consequences

In a time when it is popular to bash all things government, one issue that consistently frustrates me is the degree to which the ones doing the bashing are so often themselves significant recipients of government services.  I have puzzled over this again and again (Is it ignorance?  Is it garden variety hypocrisy?).  Susanne Mettler over at The Washington Monthly (see here) may just provide me with a reasonable explanation.  Her essay details the extent to which so many Americans today do not even acknowledge themselves to be recipients of government programs.  The telling graph from her piece is given below:

  

Ms. Mettler says:

In 2008, I conducted a survey to gauge the degree to which Americans who had received various government social benefits recognized them as such. Not surprisingly, most beneficiaries of the G.I. Bill who took part in the survey acknowledged that they had been given a leg up by the government. But of the respondents who made use of tax-advantaged Coverdell or 529 education savings accounts, 64 percent said they had “not used a government social program,” as did 59.6 percent of those who used HOPE and Lifelong Learning Tax Credits.

So, I guess I shouldn't be surprised when people act as if they are "self-made" and all this government "stuff" is going to someone else.


Her essay (a book is scheduled to be published this fall) contains many interesting historical details, including the following:

Of the three most expensive ones, the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction was created first, as part of the original tax code in 1913; the preferential tax treatment of employer pensions was established through a hodgepodge of administrative rulings and congressional statues between 1914 and 1926; and the tax-privileged status of employer-provided health benefits resulted from a similar conglomeration of policies during World War II and in the 1950s. In 2011, these three pillars of the submerged state are expected to cost the nation $104.5 billion, $67.1 billion, and $177 billion, respectively.