Time to Eliminate those Government Handouts!

There are a good many folks who believe (myself included) that our democracy can truly flourish only within a properly educated citizenry. That notion is deemed one of the fundamental reasons for government support for education.

We have railed time and again about the need for an educated public. We have taken the tongue in cheek approach with the likes of How Were the Apollo Astronauts Able to Walk on the Moon? And we have been downright negative about that failure in A Small-Minded, Easily-Swayed American Public.

Today we turn to a table that appeared in Keep Your Government Hands Off My Government Programs! by Catherine Rampell at the New York Times Economix blog. The table should not need any explanation but just in case, Paul Krugman provided this simple sentence in his summation, Medicare Recipients Against Handouts:

44 percent of Social Security recipients, and 40 percent of Medicare recipients, believe that they don’t benefit from any government social program.

This likely falls into the category of the “Apollo Astronauts” question and the proverbial you just can’t make this stuff up.

But it does beg a simple question – is this something else we can blame on K-12 public education?