From Ron Paul:
The media insists on characterizing statements about dependency on government handouts as controversial, but in truth such statements are absolutely correct. It’s not that nearly half of Americans are dependent on government; it’s actually more than half. If one includes not just people on food stamps and welfare, but also seniors on Medicare, Social Security and people employed by the government directly, the number is more like 165 million out of 308 million, which is 53%.
Some argue that Social Security and Medicare benefits are a right because people pay into these programs their whole lives, or that we need a government safety net in place for people who fall on hard times. However, this all becomes a moot point when the funds people depend on become worthless due to government default or rampant inflation.
This is less an issue of dignity or dependence on government, and more about the deceitfulness of government promises.
The Fed recently announced that it plans to keep interest rates near zero and keep buying near worthless assets from banks indefinitely. This enables Congress to spend without having to take deficits or the debt seriously and there is every indication they intend to spend with impunity until the system collapses. There are no brakes on the runaway train. The federal debt ceiling law does nothing to limit spending. The ceiling will have to be raised yet again perhaps before the year is out. What is happening in Greece with austerity measures and riots in the street will happen here within a decade according to some realistic estimates if we do not find some way to fiscally restrain our government.
There is little point in a debate about being entitled to healthcare or food or shelter from fellow taxpayers if the whole system has collapsed. And, with the way our politicians have taken over and mismanaged vast amounts of resources, collapse seems almost unavoidable. Yet the number of Americans who have significant dependency on government is dangerously high, and I honestly fear for them.
Worse, corporate welfare is also at an all time high with no signs of diminishing. Though it is hard to quantify, Tad Dehaven at Cato has estimated that the government spends nearly twice as much on corporate welfare than on social welfare. Both parties are equally guilty. More and more, the business sector is learning to rely on taxpayer largesse in one form or another. They used to be solely concerned with providing a better product to the consumer at a better price. Now, success on Wall Street depends entirely too much on having the best lobbyists on K Street. If one includes the employees of “private” businesses who depend on government contracts, grants or bailouts, there are even more people dependent on government in some way.
Government does not create resources when it taxes people and prints money; it merely redistributes the wealth, while supporting a massive, wasteful bureaucracy along the way. Government is a giant, blood-sucking parasite on our otherwise healthy economy. For too long we have entrusted too much economic power and influence to irresponsible politicians in Washington. It’s the chaos that ensues after they run the system into the ground that will be so painful for so many people. But realigning our economy with the free market and away from government mandates and handouts must happen in order for it to thrive again.
The answer is not to keep asking government to do more. The answer is to extricate our economy and ourselves from the grasp of Washington DC as much as possible now, before our dependency becomes our downfall.
From Paul.House.Gov
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Ron Paul says he fears for those who depend on government. WHAT I FEAR ARE THESE PEOPLE. Politicians love bribing citizens with social programs because it gets them elected and it costs them (politicians) nothing. Over time citizens get used to and even expect the government to fund (run) their lives and demand increasingly more. What logically follows is that it’s just a matter of time before the whole Ponzi scheme collapses. The scary part is when governments can no longer fund their bribing-mechanisms, those that are dependant become desperate. And desperate people get violent.
I think semi-failed Western states like Greece may become the new-normal. The people who get hurt most are young people because when their national economies become so broken, their chances of creating a decent life for themselves becomes extremely limited.
Well said Ron Paul…Its too bad we don’t have a presidential candidate that thinks the same way. Sadly, the whole system is going to collapse.
Greece, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus are the best examples of perfectly predictable petri dishes of civil discord that result from the delivery by the government and central banks of the maximum amount of manna. When the trough is removed the results are horrific We are no more than a year from this if things continue apace in this country.
I think the US could have it much worse because the US not only has to fund its massive welfare programs but it is also host to the parasitic security-military-industrial-complex. Another major challenge is the eventual massive loss of purchasing power of everyday Americans when the USD loses its sole-reserve-currency-status. When this happens, millions of middle-class-Americans will become lower-class Americans and they will have a hell of a time making ends meet.
You are correct in that thorisphere We the people are already aliding into second class, lower class, second world status with 10% drops in unadjusted income coupled with inflation damage at nearly the same percentage level It does not take long with those figures embedded in the US population income stream to create real and lasting damage.
Thing is congress raided Social Security and left worthless IOU’s in the place of money that could fund the system much longer than the repubs are claiming. Fix the SSDI issue with to many people being labeled disabled when they can work and that will lighten the load.
How about drug price controls like the rest of the world. US patients pay far more for medication than other countries. Look at how many drug ads run between 5 and 7pm some night, this is adding trillions to the cost of medicare every year.
All the poor and the middle classes are suffering from inflation so their wages went down in terms of purchasing powers. Because of that, they would have to depend on the government’s benefits so that they’ll receive some extra dollars to pay for their needs. There are others who keeping their savings in dollars but they are also losing. After the collapse, everyone will lose everything and they won’t be able to adapt the new reality so a lot of them will die. Some of them won’t be able to buy food. I think that’s how to world’s population will return to normal.