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Dependency nation?

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A wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread, metaphor for inflation. This is what Obama, with his fiscal cliff plan, threatens us with.

Will America become a dependency nation? We’re not one yet, but that’s coming. Every year, more people depend on the government than before. That can end in only one way: total collapse.

Dependency—where we stand

Last night, Investors Business Daily repeated some grim numbers that tell America where she stands on dependency. The numbers come from the Senate Budget Committee, the Social Security Administration, the Census Bureau, the IRS, and other government offices, and some private studies. Did you know that:

  • 107 million Americans were on welfare of some kind by the end of June of last year? That’s 11 percent more than two years before. “Welfare” doesn’t include Medicare or Social Security. At least people pay into those programs directly. (The government says that you pay in for your own benefit later. In fact, what you pay in, pays for benefits going out to those on it now. But that’s another story.)
  • In the last three months, more people applied for Social Security disability than found jobs at private businesses?
  • 43 percent of people who come in to this country are still on welfare 20 years later?
  • 49.5 percent of Americans pay no income taxes?

Dependency grows every year. And so does the national debt. As a country, we owe $211 trillion. This page has some nifty pictures to show you what one trillion dollars looks like. Now multiply that by 211. The government added the last 11 trillions last year alone. Who’s going to pay all that back? Can anyone pay that back? $122.1 trillion of that has no collateral at all. If you tried to stack that up in $100 bills, you’d have more than 30 stacks of fork-lift pallets, each rising as tall as the fallen North Tower of the World Trade Center stood, antenna and all!

That’s what dependency does to a country.

Dependency—where we’re headed

A wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread. That's the end point of dependency.

A Weimar-era householder wheels a barrow full of worthless Reichsbanknotes to the corner baker to buy a loaf of bread. Will the US economy reduce people to this, if they don’t have gold and silver?

No one can blame any one President for this. In fact, we can’t blame Presidents at all. We asked for it. At about 1890, Americans finished settling the “Wild West.” We simply ran out of space for pioneer families to stake out claims and depend only on themselves. The old “pioneer spirit” died. Dependency took its place. Movements like Populism and Progressivism taught dependency as a civic virtue. If you depend on the government, no one expects anything of you. They expect it of those who “have all the money.” Soon the idea took hold that those who “have all the money,” stole it. No one says that out loud (except for Karl Marx and those who learned from him). But that’s what Barack Obama, for one, means by “they have to pay their fair share.”

And Barack Obama makes America more dependent all the time. His Agriculture Department runs ads on TV, and posters in American consulates in Mexico, saying, “Eat right! Get your food stamps!” Now he’s letting some States (like New York and California) let people collect welfare when they won’t even try to work or find work. (When resting in bed counts as work, the system is now gaming itself.) Why might he be doing this? Probably to make sure that the dependent voters outnumber the non-dependent voters. When over half the voters depend on the government, they’ll vote to keep the gravy train running, every time.

Who pays for all that? If you don’t depend on the government, then you do.

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From each, according to his ability, to each, according to his need.

Who said that? If you said, “Karl Marx,” you win the gold star.

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So what’s wrong with that? Just this: this system punishes those who make things work, and rewards those who weigh it down. An evil-genius couple named Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven figured it out 46 years ago. The title of their 1966 paper says it all: The Weight of the Poor. (Dr. Cloward is dead, but his widow, Dr. Piven, still lives. And she and Barack Obama once worked together, to build a new, radical Marxist party.)

If dependency grows, the ones that the people depend on will leave. They’re already leaving France, after that country started taxing them at 75 percent of their extra income. They’ll either leave America, too, or simply stop doing the things that made them rich. Then we’ll all be poorer. And the “Weight of the Poor” won’t lead to the socialist paradise that Cloward and Piven looked forward to. Instead, people will riot in the streets. Then all the things that we take for granted, like electric power, will shut down.

Who can stop that? You can. Make up your mind to be responsible, and not dependent. And don’t vote for Presidents or Senators or congressmen who have dependency as their ideal. While you’re at it, put aside your envy of “the rich.” Once we start working to see how rich we can get, and all by ourselves, we’ll be richer as a country. Then we can start paying some of that $211 trillion back.

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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.

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