August 21, 2012
Source: Michael Snyder
A
very large segment of the population has figured out that it can use
voting as a tool to get more money and benefits from the government, and
that is a very dangerous thing.
Once upon a time, the free market was
the one that distributed nearly all the wealth in our system. But now
the federal government has become a giant deluded "Santa Claus" that
distributes goodies to the American people far beyond its actual
capacity to do so.
In fact, we are borrowing trillions of dollars
that we do not have so that our politicians can continue to buy votes
with handouts. Look, we will always need a safety net. We don't want
anyone in America starving to death or sleeping in the street. However,
our current system has gotten completely and totally out of control.
Today, there are nearly 80 different "means-tested welfare programs" operated by the federal government. As I have written about previously,
more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in those programs. Sadly,
that does not even count Social Security and Medicare. Tens of
millions of Americans are enrolled in each of those programs as well.
And when you add in more than 22 million government workers, you get one
giant pile of people that are getting money or benefits from the
government. In fact, at this point more than half of all Americans are
at least partially dependent on the government.
A recent Forbes article by Bill Wilson estimates that over 165 million Americans are government dependents to at least some degree....
New research from Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee Jeff Sessions (R-AL) reveals that this reality may already be here, with more than 107 million Americans on some form of means-tested government welfare.
Add to that 46 million seniors collecting Medicare (subtracting out about 10 million on Supplemental Security Income, Medicaid, and other senior-eligible programs already included in Sessions’ means-tested chart) and 22 million government employees at the federal, state, and local level — and suddenly, over 165 million people, a clear majority of the 308 million Americans counted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2010, are at least partially dependents of the state.
That is absolutely staggering.
So why is this happening?
Well, for one thing our economy is not producing enough good jobs. Millions of our jobs have been shipped out of the country, and of the jobs that remain, only 24.6 percent of them are considered to be "good jobs" at this point.
So millions of families are really hurting. In fact, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck at least some of the time.
This week, Joe Biden declared that "the middle class is coming back", but that was a giant lie.
The truth is that the middle class is being absolutely shredded.
More Americans fall out of the middle class every single day. Right now
there are more than 100 million Americans
that are considered to be "poor" or "near poor", and the number of
Americans on food stamps has risen by more than 14 million since Barack
Obama entered the White House.
No, the middle class is definitely not coming back. Poverty is
exploding all around us and every single day even more Americans become
dependent on the government.
And that is how the social engineers like it. They don't want us to
be strong and independent. They want us to be weak and groveling and
dependent on them.
So who is paying for all of this?
Well, it sure isn't the wealthy. They have become absolute masters at avoiding taxes.
And it sure isn't the poor people. Most of them don't even pay any income taxes.
So who is paying for all of this?
Hard working middle class Americans are, and our children and our grandchildren are.
Both Democrats and Republicans see nothing wrong with stealing
trillions of dollars from future generations so that they can shower
their constituents with benefits that we simply cannot afford.
What we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is beyond
criminal. I am amazed that more people are not completely outraged by
all of this.
Obama, Bush, Clinton and our Congress critters have showered the
American people will trillions of dollars that have been ripped off from
Americans that have not even been born yet. They seem to think that it
is really funny that they are going to stick them with the bill.
I find it absolutely revolting.
But very few of our politicians will even discuss seriously cutting back the benefits that we have promised to hand out.
Nobody wants to be the bad guy.
And more specifically, very few of our politicians are willing to risk their careers in order to do what they know is right.
We are becoming a society that is completely and totally addicted to government money and government benefits.
We expect the government to take care of us from the cradle to the grave.
In many ways, the government has actually become a god to millions upon millions of Americans.
