The era of big government didn’t end with Ronald Reagan, and it didn’t end with Bill Clinton.
Over half of all Americans receive government handouts of some sort, according to an economic analysis published this week.
Worse, about one in five Americans hold a government job or a government-funded job, according to the analysis.
Slightly over half of all Americans — 52.6 percent — now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, N.J. That’s up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President’s Reagan’s move to scale back the size of government.
That two-decade shrink-the-government trend now appears over, if for no other reason than demographics. The aging baby-boomer generation is poised to receive big payments from Social Security and government healthcare programs. . . .
Mr. Shilling’s analysis found that about 1 in 5 Americans hold a government job or a job reliant on federal spending. A similar number receive Social Security or a government pension. About 19 million others get food stamps, 2 million get subsidized housing, and 5 million get education grants. For all these categories, Mr. Shilling counted dependents as well as the direct recipients of government income. — Christian Science Monitor
Shilling also predicts that the number of government beneficiaries will grow to 60 percent by 2040. This seems like an underestimation to me.
The Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress which audits government agencies’ books, has been warning for years that spending on welfare and other government entitlement programs is “unsustainable.” Even Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke warned Congress last month that the “expansion of debt would spark a fiscal crisis . . . sort of like a snowball rolling down the hill.”
An editorial in Monday’s Investor’s Business Daily sums up the problem and the likely consequences:
The left delights in shrieking about how the rich beat down the poor, about how the wealthy benefit from the tax cuts at the expense of those at the bottom. But as we pointed out on this page Monday, the top 5% of income earners pay 57.1% of all federal income taxes. At the same time, 45 million Americans, many of them in the lower-income grouping, pay no taxes at all. Instead of the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer, the rich are paying a growing share of the tax burden while the poor’s share shrinks.
How long before the richest and most productive Americans decide that they will no longer prop up the poorest and least productive? With their political influence waning as that of the untaxed and low-taxed Americans and those who live off the government grows, they can either seek a tax-haven nation where government isn’t a growth industry, or they can choose to be less productive.
Neither choice is good for America’s future. A dependent nation is a nation that cannot last long. — Investor’s Business Daily
How long before they outlaw quitting your job and phase in the Soviet-style program of dictating what work everyone will do? This is the natural next step.
Galt’s Gulch, anyone?
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April 26, 2007 3:06 am
July 5, 2007 12:23 am
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I’ve been searching for Galt’s Gulch since I read about. I think it’s in New Hampshire somewhere…
Yeah, I was going to say, I thought that’s what the FSP was supposed to be.
Jerry A. Pipes | April 17, 2007 3:03 pm
Yeah, I was going to say, I thought that’s what the FSP was supposed to be. You’re way off. The Free State Project is meant to try to get government out of people’s lives by getting a lot of people who are not so progovernment to move to New Hampshire.
I am a single mother who was once married and my husband left me and two children to survive on our own. He still does not pay child support to this day. I was forced out of survival to grab on to the programs that the govt. has to offer. I STILL work part-time and try to grow a business I started out of desperation. Even though I am recieving medical and foodstamps, I am still against the way the govt runs it. Because I work I get less benefits and am denied certain benefits. They reward the lazy and it should be the other way around. It should be: “You can’t recieve full benefits for ANYTHING unless you are handicap. perm or temp.” You will recieve benefits ONLY if you work otherwise. Over 40% of that 52% are able-bodied individuals…believe me…I’ve been in the same lines with them at the welfare office…they do it because they can. I did it because I had to and I wish the govt would give me help finding a better job or supplying me with income and money for school at the same time. We could eliminate lazy persons from abusing the system and our country would get stronger financially because of it. “God helps them who help themselves” Why doesn’t our govt believe this? Were we not founded on Christian beliefs? Where did we go wrong by straying from that?
We are becoming a welfare state mostly because our foreign trade policies have encouraged our own industry to move out of America. Along with the industry went the jobs which allowed American workers to be financially independent and prosperous. This was no accident! The power mongers of the world want a one world government in which there will be no liberty. America has always been the champion of freedom and we must be brought down for their plans to succeed. Stop causing poverty by not supporting domestic industry. “America First” has become politically incorrect. Most poor people in America only want a good job, not a hand out. Our education system has been degraded to the point that our children are not prepared for the few jobs that do exist. Illegal workers have taken construction jobs from Americans who once had a good living. People over 50 are fired from their jobs for trumped up reasons and end up working at minimum wage. Could you live on a part time job for $5.15 per hour? Once workers had health insurance from their employers witch covered most medical cost and high enough wages to pay the rest. Our country has lost all equity. If we regain our honesty and integrity and get over the ME FIRST attitudes, we may still have a chance. Don’t begrudge the disenfranchised a meal. Correct the problems that have reduced hard working Americans into beggars! Many Americans have taken improper advantage of the system. Most of them are NOT poor. Climb down out of your ivory towers now or soon they will fall while you are still pointing fingers.
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