The U.S. is now a socialist country, I guess.
Transfer payments are money provided to individuals by the government, without the government receiving anything in return. If the government hired you to do a job and paid you for that work, that would not be a transfer payment.
The spike represents the effects of sending “stimulus” checks, by shifting future payments to the present (borrowing lots of money that needs to be paid back in the future).
One-third of U.S. personal income came from transfer payments from the government. Per Stein’s Law, something that cannot continue, will not continue.
An observation: Special situations are always used to justify an increase in transfer payments. But you can see a pattern in the chart – increases are rarely cut back.
