Means-Tested Government Benefit Recipients Outnumber Full-Time Year-Round Workers

Census Bureau: Means-Tested Gov't Benefit Recipients Outnumber Full-Time Year-Round Workers

(CNSNews.com) - 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.

That means there were about 1.07 people getting some form of means-tested government benefit for every 1 person working full-time year round.

The Census Bureau counted as recipients of means-tested government programs “anyone residing in a household in which one or more people received benefits from the program.” Many of these people lived in households receiving more than one form of means-tested benefit at the same time.

Among the 108,592,000 people who fit the Census Bureau’s description of a means-tested benefit recipient in the fourth quarter of 2011 were 82,457,000 people in households receiving Medicaid, 49,073,000 beneficiaries of food stamps, 20,223,000 on Supplemental Security Income, 23,228,000 in the Women, Infants and Children program, 13,433,000 in public or subsidized rental housing, and 5,854,000 in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Also among the 108,592,000 means-tested benefit recipients counted by the Census Bureau were people getting free or reduced-price lunch or breakfast, state-administered supplemental security income and means-tested veterans pensions.

The Grand Scheme is to have everyone dependent on the government. The fly in the ointment is where is the money (productivity) going to come from? The whole premise of communism/socialism is that the prosperity created by capitalism is a constant. Like the spoiled child from a rich family who perceives the family wealth as infinite and everlasting, the left can’t fathom it all coming to a crashing halt. By the time other people’s money is gone, so is freedom, and the work incentive is provided by force or the threat of force, i.e., slavery. You can’t motivate people to produce by depriving them of the fruits of their labor. The real constant the left can’t understand is human nature.

it's coming...

"Business? In this business, you're always one step away from bankruptcy. Funny money, credit, speculation...

"Somewhere in this country there's a little old lady with seventy-nine dollars and twenty-five cents.
And the five cents is a Buffalo nickel...

"If she cashes in her investment, the whole thing'll collapse -- General Motors, the Pentagon, the DuPont Sisters and the whole shebang...

"We're all runnin' downhill. Gotta keep runnin' faster all the time or it'll all fall down..."

— the late great character actor, Dub Taylor, as disgruntled gas station operator in 1974 film, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

Survival of the Unfit

Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (often referred to as The Theory of Survival of the Fittest) describes the positive effects resulting from any “pressure” on an animal species that removes the least fit among the species and allows only the most fit of the species to reproduce. Many of us are well aware of this “Survival of the Fittest” theory, but few are aware that Darwin also makes mention of the negative effects resulting from unlimited reproduction of a species’ least fit when the weak, the lazy, and the stupid are left unchecked.

We like to think otherwise, but our species, Homo sapiens, isn’t that long “out of the trees” and the same laws of nature that affect all of God’s creatures apply equally to us. If we were to observe any other species that had been allowed to reproduce without limitations, we would know immediately what the consequences will be.

Whenever the weak; lazy; and stupid of a species is allowed to reproduce unimpeded by predators that feed off the weak; lazy; and stupid, they soon outnumber the strong, productive, and intelligent. When the weak/lazy/stupid dominate the gene pool, the entire population becomes weak/ lazy/stupid, and then the population collapses.

In the past, when these collapses occurred within human populations, they have been referred to as a “Malthusian Collapse.” Thomas Malthus, a Nineteenth Century Economist, thought these collapses were caused simply because past civilizations had reached a point where human populations could no longer produce sufficient food supplies to feed themselves, but he never pinned down the exact reason for these food shortages.

We now think these collapses of past human civilizations have occurred whenever the unproductive weak/lazy/stupid greatly outnumber the strong/productive/intelligent of the population. In other words, the majority of the population becomes too lazy to perform the work necessary to provide for themselves and what’s left of the strong/productive/intelligent refuses to continue to do it for them.

These collapses have occurred at frequent intervals throughout human history, and Western Civilization is, in my humble opinion, currently on the cusp of one of these collapses.

D.J. Taylor

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