Half of US social program recipients believe they "have not used a government social program" #p2 #tcot

from http://www.boingboing.net/2011/07/08/half-of-us-social-pr.html

"Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era," a paper by Cornell's Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions Suzanne Mettler features this remarkable chart showing that about half of American social program beneficiaries believe that they "have not used a government social program." It's the "Keep your government hands off my Medicare" phenomena writ large: a society of people who subsist on mutual aid and redistributive policies who've been conned (and conned themselves) into thinking that they are rugged individualists and that everyone else is a parasite.

Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era (PDF) (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)