Why pay for your own stuff when you can get it for free from Uncle Sam?! Government serves meals, provides housing, gives out electricity, schooling, cell phones, hospitalization, computers, medication, gasoline, and almost every service imaginable. Sounds pretty nice– I’ll take one of each!
But all that “free” stuff is actually paid for with your tax dollars. And the government is spending more on these handouts than it can afford, continually worsening the debt crisis in this country– and in case you haven’t heard, we’re now more than 16 trillion bucks in the hole. Ouch.
Despite the high price tag of government handouts, it seems logical to think that they are beneficial at a time when many Americans suffer financially on a daily basis. However, poverty levels have not decreased even though our spending on government payouts continues to go up each year. The truth is, government handouts do not usually yield the desired results.
I am completely in support of a temporary, effective safety net in place for struggling Americans who need a hand up. But government handouts and entitlements are often ineffective, limitless, and out of control. According to a new study by TrimTabs, payouts from the government now make up more than a third of total salaries and wages of the U.S. population. Sadly, these payouts have made tens of millions of Americans dependent on the federal government. These people await the morsels tossed to them from Washington each month. Although this largely contributes to our national debt, bureaucratic politicians love this system because it allows them to “buy” votes by promising more handouts.
Handouts from the government are not a long term solution. As the old saying goes: Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Handouts do not teach people to be independent. They do not give people dignity or self respect. They do not exemplify the American Dream.
Below are some statistics that I find particularly disturbing.
- A whopping 47% of Americans pay zero income tax.
- One out of every seven Americans are currently on food stamps. That’s a 70% increase since 2007 and sets a historic record.
- Since Obama took office, federal welfare spending has increased by 41%, to more than $193 billion per year… Yet poverty levels are unaffected.
- Nearly half (49.1%) of American households receive some sort of government benefit.
Government dependency is a dangerous thing. Instead of giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty, these handouts only make poverty more comfortable. We must remember what the Constitution stands for and our founding fathers’ wishes- they did not want the government to have much power at all.
There are millions of Americans that are deeply suffering right now and they need to be helped. But government payouts are not the solution or the path to prosperity. We must reduce the size of government and create an environment where business can grow. This would produce more jobs and give our country a chance to thrive again.
What are your thoughts?
Related articles
- More Welfare = More Poverty (moonbattery.com)
- Life on the government’s dime (jeremystyron.com)
- More Than Half Of All Americans Are At Least Partially Dependent On The Government (blacklistednews.com)
- Thomas Sowell – Depending on Dependency (conservativeread.com)
- My Beef With Obama (thelibertarianchick.wordpress.com)
- Depending on Dependency (lewrockwell.com)
Kristin Tate 
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
Never have such words been truer or more profound. We have begun the fall of the American Empire, and Obama has pushed us there.
“Below are some statistics that I find particularly disturbing.
A whopping 47% of Americans pay zero income tax.”
Ummm…. I’d prefer if 100% of Americans paid zero income tax.
Me too! However, I don’t like the idea that those 47% who DON’T pay taxes are being supported by the other 53%.
I see this kind or dependency first hand. My neighbor got laid off a few years ago. She enjoyed collecting unemployment benefits for two years. Now, with few remaining skills and no job opportunities, she’s decided to tell her doctor that she’s “depressed”, got labeled as disabled, and now permanently collects a disability check each month.
Disgusting, Buster Brown. But, sadly, all too common.
I am always amazed by what people do to get out of work. I swear sometimes they spend more time and effort getting out of it then if they were to just do it. What happened to that American work ethic we read about in history class.