Posted on 03/03/2010 4:43:34 PM PST by quesney
Welfare State: A major newspaper looks at the data and finds that Americans have become more dependent on government than at any time since the Depression. Something's gone terribly wrong in our country.
We Americans pride ourselves on our independence. Our nation's founding document even uses that in its title — the Declaration of Independence. But this spirit is fading with each new year, each new state and federal program, each new unkeepable promise made to a growing throng of citizens looking to government — not their own abilities, savvy, learning and hard work — to get by in life.
A Washington Times report underscores this shift. Last year, "for the first time since the Great Depression, Americans took more aid from the government than they paid in taxes," it has determined.
Transfer payments — unemployment, Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare and other forms of government welfare — grew $231 billion last year to just over $2.1 trillion. Meanwhile, individual taxes shrank $325 billion to $2.1 trillion, slightly less (before rounding) than transfer payments.
Let that sink in for a moment: We, as a people, are taking more in welfare than we're paying in taxes.
[...]
The temptation is to write off all this as a fluke, a recession-based aberration. But the trend has been in place for years.
[...]
So much for the idea that "the era of big government is over..."
Economist Gary Shilling has his own dependence gauge. His most recent report, in 2007, showed that 52.6% of Americans got "significant income" from government. Seven years earlier, it was "just" 49.4%. In 1950, it was 28.3%.
This makes today's debate over the government's takeover of health care — one-sixth of the economy — and other key industries, such as autos and banking, all the more urgent.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
“It’s over, folks. Obama knows what he’s doing. My fear is that he knows America better than the rest of us think we do.”
The bond market hasn’t voted yet. When it does, it will bring all entitlement programs crashing down. Unfortunately, it will bring everything else crashing down too, but that’s how this gets done, absent some outbreak of sanity amongst our elected class.
“The bond market hasn’t voted yet. When it does, it will bring all entitlement programs crashing down. Unfortunately, it will bring everything else crashing down too, but that’s how this gets done, absent some outbreak of sanity amongst our elected class.”
Great point. Not just here but in Europe, where the bond market is already voting.
Yep, she imploded under her own whacky weight. Medina was and still is funky cold.
Right on, well said.
Good Lord. This was the same wailing and screeching and fainting when Newsweek came out with their idiotic, suicidal “We’re All Socialists Now” cover.
There may be some nasty corrections in our near future, but that’s the price you pay for laziness. It’ll work out eventually.
Medina is Ron Paul with a yeast infection and as big a liar as Obama.
Your crap would make sense if she was a conservative rather than a LIEbertarian.
The article doesn’t even mention the biggest entitlement, which is the oldest and biggest transfer of wealth and still growing; socialized schooling. You think Socialized Security is a sacred cow, just try to take away socialized schooling and return to the capitalist system the country started with.
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