On Sunday, the NYT published a long, front-page story that is getting a lot of attention, Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend On It.  The article has a lot of interesting facts, like the amount of spending on government entitlement programs has skyrocketed, but those dollars are going less and less (as a percentage) to the lowest fifth of the population.  Relatedly, though surveys show that most Americans believe that the programs that are growing the fastest are for the poor, these programs are not growing at all, except for Medicaid.  And, the program that is growing the fastest is Medicare.

But the article wants to point out what it seems to see as a hypocrisy:  that people who are arguing that government should be smaller, and voting their concerns, are beneficiaries of these programs.  So, folks that argue that government should cut spending to the poor are taking advantage of free lunch programs and getting disability checks, Social Security and Medicare.  The article seems to think that this irony is the result of some sort of "except me" selfishness or cognitive dissonance.  If the latter is the case, then voters are surely not voting their interests, and next year they will wake up and realize that they can't make ends meet any more because they can't qualify for free lunch or their unemployment checks were much smaller.  And then, of course, it's too late to re-cast your vote.  The article seems to hold up these people as sort-of ignorant victims of Tea Party rhetoric who maybe shouldn't deserve to vote.

But, there could be alternative theories.  It could be that a voter doesn't think that some of these programs should be funded by the government.  But they are.  So, if I can't control how that money is being spent, then it's in my interest to take advantage of the program until the program is ended.  So, I may think that our summer research grants are too large (obviously a hypothetical) or that our teaching load is too small (again, just go with me).  But, I'm not in a position to change either of those, so I might as well take the summer money and teach the prescribed load.  But, if a Dean candidate came through saying that she would reduce summer grants and increase the teaching load (this candidate has become extinct due to evolution), then I wouldn't be a hypocrite or a creature of cognitive dissonance to vote for that candidate.  Now, I have known a few people who turn down free government services they otherwise qualify for because they can pay their own way (special needs services for children, for example).  But these folks are few and far between, I think.

No one in the article seems to articulate that "ride the wave" type of thinking (at least how the article is written), but some do seem to fit into the category of "I spent my life thinking I could count on Social Security and Medicare, and now I depend on it.  But I do think the government should make cuts so as not to overburden the youth.  But any cuts to my income would be devastating because I was counting on those."  I don't think that's hypocritical or cognitive dissonance; that's just realistic pragmatism.

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