Medicare and America’s Entitlement

In the book “A Nation of Takers” Nicholas Eberstadt explains to us how America’s entitlement has become a huge problem in the last fifty years. Eberstadt notes how in 1960, entitlement payments accounted for under a third of the federal government’s spending. While today, entitlement spending accounts for a full two-thirds of the federal budg. In the book, Eberstadt has many graphs and data to show us examples of how America’s entitlement is growing exponentially. He shows the over spending on a range of many entitlements, including things like Medicare or disability payments.

He does not just show the exponential growth of entitlement, he also goes into detail about the catastrophic economic and cultural costs happening due to this entitlement spending. He strongly argues that this spending is definitely draining our federal spending. It also has a long-lasting, negative impact on how citizens are seen by others. In the book, he uses different graphs and maps to show how this is a growing problem in our country. He uses maps to show how the government’s spending with programs like Medicare and food stamps, has increased by ten percent in the past forty years.

The author is attempting to inform readers, that if America’s entitlement doesn’t get fixed, the country will continue to further increase the debt. Eberstadt stated that Medicare is proposed to spend over thirty-seven trillion dollars in the next ten years. Throughout the book, he is trying to show how all of the things that the government benefits us with, are what we are starting to take advantage of. In the book, his research has shown that the government is giving too much money to people who don’t actually need it. Those people are taking advantage of the government programs, which are meant to help people in need. Eberstadt tells us how in the 90’s, the government spent more money on Medicare and social security than entitlement programs. Once we entered the early 2000’s, the government’s spending on Medicare and social security, has now equaled out with the entitlement programs. Towards the end of the book, it shows other political individuals writing their reviews on how they feel about Eberstadt’s information.

Eberstadt’s main arguments in this book are that, America had problem taking advantage of the programs provided by the government, and that the government is putting too much money into those programs now. Throughout the entire book, he is trying to explain how Americans need to face the fact, that they are relying too much on others for extra money. He also argues how money is being taken away from social security and how it is ensuring it will not be able to pay the 56 billion people it assists every year. The author does a very good job at trying to get his points across in this book. With the author having all of the graphs and maps as evidence, and utilizing examples, it really helps to understand the situation even more. I think the arguments in the book, are very well presented. It is organized very well into topics on what is going to mentioned. What really helps this book prove its point, is how there is so much research which goes along the authors points and views. What really made his arguments convincing to me, is that he had the graphs and data tables showing how the entitlement spending in America is growing exponentially.

Besides the author using graphs and data, he has many utilized examples of things in the United States are getting affected by the over spending on entitlement. Eberstadt states, “Over three decades 1979-2009, the unemployment rate has risen, and fallen, and risen again in successive cycles, but the proportion of Americans living in households seeking and receiving means-tested benefits has moved in almost steady upward direction, essientially unaffected by the gravitational pull of the unemployment rate” (Eberstadt 37). What makes his argument not as convincing is that he doesn’t have as many outside sources to back him up. He only uses his own opinions and unsupported research. This definitely contributes to debates on governments spending and the importance of government programs.

The use of this book is to inform people about the problems ensuing in our country and what the future will look like if we don’t fix these problems. This is my review on the book “A Nation of Takers” by Nicholas Eberstadt.

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