They want to make beggars out of us because beggars are easier to please:
Americans who were recipients of means-tested government benefits in 2011 outnumbered year-round full-time workers, according to data released this month by the Census Bureau.
They also out-numbered the total population of the Philippines.
There were 108,592,000 people in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs, the Census Bureau said in data released this week. Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, there were 101,716,000 people who worked full-time year round in 2011. That included both private-sector and government workers
Note that – the number of workers only gets up to 101.7 million because of government workers; which means when you add up total government dependency, it outnumbers self-sufficiency even more. This is the terrible result of economic policies which reward crony capitalism and social policies which encourage dependency. In a rational world, those who are dependent should be no more than 10% or so of the total population, not rising above 50% because – point blank – one man producing wealth cannot support one man consuming wealth. Almost everyone should be self sufficient, or your nation is in terminal decline.
This is why I say we’ve only got a few years left – if we don’t halt and reverse this soon, America will collapse. There will be no United States of America any longer as each section breaks free – especially among the areas with the least amount of dependency who will no longer wish to tax themselves in to penury to pay for the dependents. It is change or die.
Blogs For Victory 
I realize all the Lefties have either left or been kicked off this blog, but, on the outside chance that there are any still out there who can post a response without being nasty or condescending, I’d love to know if there is a limit to how big and powerful they would like the federal government to get, and is there a limit where the number of people dependent on government is unsustainable?
Spook,
They’d have nothing rational to say – there isn’t anything rational to say. Its all just insanity at this point – the left is destroying this nation, not on purpose, but simply from being ignorant and not thinking things through. I saw a report today which claims that a gay waiter was refused a tip by a Christian group on account of his homosexuality. The question immediately leaps to the fore: “how did they know he was gay?”. Its not like sexual orientation comes up much in conversations between patrons and servers, right? But, nothing doing for the liberals – they bought it and trolling through the comments you find amazingly hateful comments about Christians and Christianity. Some, likely without realizing what they’re saying, calling for things which would make being a Christian illegal. No critical thinking; no rationality – they have cut themselves off from Orthodox belief, and thus from Reason, itself.
I do worry that these idiots will propel us in to civil war in a fit of absent-mindedness. That they won’t think about the likely outcomes of their actions and will eventually do things which force people to appeal to arms. This nation is heading for its grave, unless we can get these people out of all positions of influence.
I do worry that these idiots will propel us in to civil war in a fit of absent-mindedness. That they won’t think about the likely outcomes of their actions and will eventually do things which force people to appeal to arms.
I don’t relish the thought of that, but I and millions of ordinary Americans are more than ready. If it does come to that, the trick will be to not have it end up like the French Revolution.
Alan Colmes was on The Kelley File the other night, he stated that food stamps are good for the economy because for every dollar the government spends there is a dollar-sixty in economic activity generated.
To fully understand this we note that Colmes (and Pelosi) stated clearly “every dollar the government spends“. Now think about that distinction; the government has to first confiscate a bushel of dollars, to give buckets of cash out. For every dollar they hand out they need to confiscate a dollar-sixty from the private sector, keep sixty cents for “government operations” (think Sham Wow, handling charges.) so the recipient gets a buck & the government gets sixty cents and all together they collect/spend a buck – sixty;
AN ECONOMIC MIRACLE!
Then there’s The Forgotten Man; remember him? The Guy in this equation who gives up his dollar – sixty, you see, all he has to do is open his business up and the government employee and welfare recipient will stroll in and give him his dollar – sixty back in exchange for the goods and services he provides.
’tis a WONDERMENT!
If you believe for one second that libiots actually think that too many people on welfare is unsustainable, then you’re not paying attention to libiots.
Events that adversely reflect on the Progressive vision for America keep unfolding so fast that the Donk spin machine is going to strip a gear just trying to keep up. In addition to the revelation in Mark’s post, consumer confidence in government just hit a new all-time low, and ten times more people with individual health policies are seeing their policies cancelled than are signing up for ObamaCare. As Steve Hayes noted on Fox’s Special Report tonight, Obama’s oft-repeated statement that, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it”, is going to go down as the biggest political lie of all time. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, it was also announced today that Iran may be as close as a month away from having enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon. Better buckle up — this next year is going to be a bumpy ride.
My wife was wondering just how we can win – my answer was that things may get so bad that the people will turn to any crazy idea out there in desperation…even a TEA Party-dominated GOP which promises to gut the government. It has happened before when countries went over in to collapse – Peru, Poland, Lithuania are all recent examples of nations which turned completely on the Ruling Class which had led them to disaster and elected governments committed to revolutionary change (the flip side is Argentina – which keeps re-electing the same sort of morons which repeatedly lead Argentina to disaster).
Question is: will things get bad enough by 2016? I don’t know. I honestly did not think they’d be able to keep the ball in the air this long. I also thought that with Obama re-elected, they’d start letting the truth out…allowing the economy to run down to its actual status and hope to put it back together in time for 2016. Nothing doing – Obama wants a Democrat House in 2014 so the Magical Mystery Economy keeps chugging along – with unemployment at 7.2% by grace of lowering the labor force participation rate to 1978 levels. Welcome Back, Carter, indeed.
But it won’t go on forever – to paraphrase Glen Reynolds (Instapundit) a bit; things go on until they stop. Promises which can’t be kept, won’t be. Debts which can’t be repaid, won’t be.
Democracies endure until the citizens care more for what the state can give them than for its ability to defend rich and poor alike; until they care more for their privileges than their responsibilities; until they learn they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury and use the state as an instrument for plundering, first, those that have wealth, then those that create it.”
cloward-piven strategy brought to you by marxist-alinskyites
I don’t think they are easier to please—they are just easier to BUY.
It’s the old “vote for me and I’ll give you _______” ploy and it will always work on the dumb and the greedy. But even among those who are getting the ______ are some smart enough to know that killing the goose will get rid of the golden egg.
I spent most of the week in conferences with insurance people. We are getting ready to do an early sign-up for our company health insurance, which is supposed to lock in the rate for a year starting January 1. (Note the cynical “supposed to”….) I brought up the idea of the concierge model, in which I would pay a fixed monthly amount for unlimited health care from my doctor, wholesale prices for prescriptions, and then just have to buy a catastrophic policy for major medical expenses, such as cancer or a heart attack or a car wreck.
The response was that the government “might not ALLOW” me to buy certain kinds or levels of policies. I changed my criteria and was told that the government might not “ALLOW” that either. After I heard that the government might not ALLOW five or six different kinds of policies, I said that I understood that the people there who were telling me this are not responsible for this, but that I was getting more and more irate every time I was told that the government would not ALLOW me to enter into a private contract with a private company on terms acceptable to us both.
They said yes, they understand and they agree, but this is just the way the industry is these days.
Then the next day it was a conference about our liability insurance. We were told that under the last administration, OSHA’s position was much more along the lines of “We’re pointing out this violation so you can correct it and no one will get hurt” but under this administration it is “We’re slamming you with this huge penalty for this violation”. It is now overt bullying, totally punitive. Now the role of this agency is to punish people, not help create a safe working environment.
BTW, our current health care policy has only gone up 8%, so far, though the projected rise after 2015 is more in the 20-40% range. Again, there is no way to know. And economic planning depends on, well, PLANNING—impossible to do under this regime. We can cut our company costs by 29% by going to an HMO, but there are questions about what restrictions are going to be put on HMOs. Kaiser, in Florida, has cut hundreds of thousands of clients.
Remember the video of hunting wolves from airplanes that got the weepy Libs in such a tizzy back when Palin was running for VP? I think of this image a lot, only now it is Uncle Sam in the aircraft and citizens running for their lives as they are herded into various traps.
It is to be hoped, though, that just what you’re going through will seep through to more and more people – it won’t, I think, be a conscious embrace of limited government, but I think that people will get primed to listen to people who observe that government, as thing, has a lot of problems and the solution is not to be found in more government.
It will come as a shock to all the bleeding heart middle classers out there, who wanted health care for all, to discover that, like always, they will be expected to pay for most if not all of it.
We need to remember the words of George Washington:
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. LIKE FIRE, IT IS A DANGEROUS SERVANT AND A FEARFUL MASTER.”