Government Dependents Outnumber Those With Private Sector Jobs In 11 U.S. States

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
Dec 27, 2012

America is rapidly becoming a nation of takers.  An increasing number of Americans expect the government to take care of them from the cradle to the grave, and they expect the government to dig into the pockets of others in order to pay for it all.  This philosophy can be very seductive, but what happens when the number of takers eventually outnumbers the number of producers?  In 11 different U.S. states, the number of government dependents exceeds the number of private sector workers.  This list of states includes some of the biggest states in the country: California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Maine, Kentucky, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, New Mexico and Hawaii.  It is interesting to note that seven of those states were won by Barack Obama on election night.  InCalifornia, there are 139 “takers” for every 100 private sector workers.  That is crazy!  The American people have become absolutely addicted to government money, and it gets worse with each passing year.  If you can believe it, entitlements accounted for 62 percent of all federal spending in fiscal year 2012.  It would be one thing if we could afford all of this spending, but unfortunately we simply cannot.  We are drowning in debt, and we are stealing more than a hundred million more dollars from future generations with each passing hour.  No bank robber in history can match that kind of theft.

Yes, we will always need a safety net.  There are many people out there that simply cannot take care of themselves.  We certainly don’t want to see anyone sleeping in the streets or starving to death.

But if the number of people jumping on to the safety net continues to grow at the current pace, the net will break and it will not be available for any of us.

For example, the number of Americans on food stamps grew from about 17 million in 2000 to more than 47 million today.  It nearly tripled in just 12 years.

What will happen if it nearly triples again over the next 12 years?

The federal government even has a website (benefits.gov) that guides people through the process of figuring out what welfare programs they can take advantage of.

Overall, the federal government runs nearly 80 different “means-tested welfare programs” and more than 100 million Americans are already enrolled in at least one of those programs.

Yes, I realize that figure is very hard to believe.  I had a hard time believing it when I first came across it.

And it is even more shocking when you realize that the figure of 100 million Americans does not even include those who only receive Social Security or Medicare.

Today, there are 56.76 million Americans on Social Security.

To support all of those Americans on Social Security, there are only about 94.75 million full-time private sector workers.

So there are just 1.67 full-time private sector workers to support each American that is on Social Security.

Medicare is also growing like crazy.  As I wrote about the other day, the number of Americans on Medicare is expected to grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.

How much farther can we push things before the entire system collapses?

In order to support this exploding entitlement system, we need a lot more Americans to be working good paying jobs.

Unfortunately, millions of good paying jobs continue to be shipped overseas and they aren’t coming back.

We are even losing good jobs to our own prisoners.  The United States has the largest prison population in the world by far, and the exploitation of that low wage labor pool has become a boom industry in America.  Even Microsoft and Boeing are using prison labor now.  Just check outthis video.

Meanwhile, there are millions upon millions of law-abiding Americans that cannot find jobs and that cannot take care of their families.

So poverty and dependence on the government are absolutely exploding.  We have a system that is so messed up that it is hard to even put it into words.  The middle class is being viciously shredded, and most Americans just continue to applaud the politicians from both parties that are doing this to us.

Our economy is being gutted at the same time that the welfare state is experiencing unprecedented growth.  Instead of giving us real answers, our “leaders” just continue to borrow, spend and print more money.  We are about to hit the debt limit again, and the Obama administration is saying that we should just do away with the debt limit permanently.

Most of our politicians don’t seem to understand that they are systematically destroying our economy and the bright futures that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.

But there are some politicians out there that get it.  Unfortunately, many of them live in other countries.  For example, Canadian MP Pierre Poilievre seems to have a firm grasp on what debt is doing to the United States.  The following are some excerpts from one of his speeches…

“By 2020, the US Government will be spending more annually on debt interest than the total combined military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel.”

“Through government spending the indulgence of one is the burden of another; through government borrowing, the excess of one generation becomes the yoke of the next; through international bailouts, one nation’s extravagance becomes another nation’s debt”

“Everyone takes, nobody makes, work doesn’t pay, indulgence doesn’t cost, money is free, and money is worthless.”

You can see his entire speech right here.

And if we continue down this path it is most definitely true that our money will eventually become worthless at some point.  Just today I was down at the grocery store, and a can of chili that I was able to get on sale for 75 cents a couple of years ago now has a “sale price” of $1.69.  If the Federal Reserve keeps recklessly printing dollars, eventually we will be fortunate to get a can of chili for 10 bucks.  Things cost too much already, and the Fed seems absolutely determined to cut the legs out from under the U.S. dollar.

Unfortunately, printing money is the only way that we are going to be able to service the gigantic amounts of debt that we are accumulating.

According to Chris Cox and Bill Archer, two men who served on Bill Clinton’s Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, there is no way in the world that we could raise taxes high enough to pay for all of the obligations that we are currently taking on.  They say that even if we taxed all corporations and all individuals at a 100% tax rate on all income over $66,193,  “it wouldn’t be nearly enough to fund the over $8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S. liabilities.”

Are you starting to get an idea of how much trouble we are in?

We don’t have enough money to pay for all of this.

We are broke.

Our current economy is a debt-induced illusion, and we will soon be waking up to a tremendous amount of pain.

Are you ready?

Critics Slam Sen. Feinstein’s “Assault Weapons” Ban, Gun Registry

Alex Newman
The New American
December 29, 2012

Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California has stirred up a hornets’ nest with her latest proposal to ban so-called “assault weapons” and standard capacity magazines while creating a federal registry of gun owners, complete with pictures and fingerprints. Analystssay supporting the measure would be “political suicide” for Democrats, and some opponents of Sen. Feinstein’s most recent assault on the Second Amendment are evenasking the White House to put the far-left lawmaker on trial for treason. More than a few critics also suggested the move against gun rights could start another revolution or civil war.

Despite claims by the Obama administration and the establishment media, recent polls show that a majority of Americans oppose Feinstein’s scheme, not that opinion polls matter when discussing rights enshrined in the Constitution. Analysts also say the dangerous legislation is unlikely to pass — especially with GOP control of the House and even liberal so-called “RINO” Republicans in the Senate vowing to oppose the measure. The previous “assault weapons” ban, which expired in 2004, was also entirely ineffective, according to studies.

Instead of more gun control laws, pressure is mounting on legislators to repeal statutes purporting to create so-called “gun-free zones,” which experts say are a “magnet” for mass murderers who obviously do not obey laws anyway. The National Rifle Association (NRA), meanwhile, is pushing a controversial plan for federally funded armed guards at schools to help prevent future tragedies.

Sen. Feinstein’s proposed legislation, which she promised to introduce in 2013, would purport to ban the sale, manufacture, or importation of 120 types of guns — essentially semi-automatic firearms that some politicians and their allies in the establishment press have arbitrarily describedas “assault weapons.” Included on the list are many of the most popular pistols, rifles, and shotguns owned by tens of millions of Americans. The bill would also seek to criminalize the possession of standard capacity magazines that accept more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The anti-gun extremists in Washington, D.C., critics say, are hoping to completely disarm America. “The bottom line: If we are foolish enough to embrace a ban on any weapon in the coming Congress then we are unwittingly embracing a ban on every weapon,” noted AWR Hawkins with the pro-Second Amendment group AmmoLand Shooting Sports, saying Feinstein’s plan was really a thinly veiled attempt to ban handguns as well. “The Democrats cannot be trusted with our freedoms, and they will politicize every tragedy to accomplish their ends.”

Another one of the most troubling aspects of the Feinstein scheme is a provision that would purport to mandate a federal database of gun owners, which, aside from being anti-constitutional, is also currently prohibited by statute. According to a summary of the legislation released by Sen. Feinstein, the bill would unconstitutionally seek to register weapons in a federal database that would include photographs and fingerprints of gun owners.

Also required to be able to keep one’s “grandfathered” weapons under the proposal would be local law enforcement verification placed in the federal registry, as mandated by the “National Firearms Act” (NFA) — essentially requiring a signature from a county sheriff or city police chief. One of the many problems already cited with the plan is that some anti-gun local law enforcement bosses could refuse to sign, as they already do oftentimes for machine guns, leaving gun owners with the option of either giving up their weapons, facing arrest, or hiding them.

Read the entire article

The three legged fiscal cliff: US middle and working class already facing their own fiscal cliff – 2 million Americans will lose unemployment insurance by January 1 and the debt ceiling limit being hit on December 31.

MyBudget360
December 29, 2012

To most of America the fiscal cliff is some sort of fiscal enigma.  Most realize that we are spending more than we are bringing in and also that taxes are part of our system.  What most have a harder time understanding is the machine of the Fed and how it selects winners and losers at will by digitally bailing out an entire banking industry.  Yet here we are counting down the days to a new year and we are no closer to solving this fiscal problem.  Congress is full of millionairesand come what may with the negotiations, they will remain this way.  This fiscal cliff is largely a reflection of our three legged fiscal problems; a shrinking middle class with a growing population in poverty, a ritualistic process of hiking up debt ceilings, and the taxes versus spending equation.

Leg one:  Middle class and poor

We have a large number of Americans living in poverty:

This is the highest percentage of our population living in poverty in over a generation.  Today, we now have over 47 million Americans receiving food stamps:

In the last year alone, a year of recovery at least on paper, we added close to one million Americans to the food stamp program.  Many Americans are no longer one paycheck away from poverty.  They are now one food stamp payment away from being in hunger, in the most prosperous nation in the world.  The growth in these numbers is largely coming from many people falling off the middle class track.  The middle is getting smaller while both ends get more and more crowded.

To the point of the fiscal cliff, if nothing is resolved between now and January 1 then 2 million Americans are set to see their unemployment insurance expire:

We still have 12 million Americans receiving unemployment insurance.  Compare this to the 7 million or so in 2006 at a more baseline level.  Many Americans are already living in a fiscal cliff version of reality and they are simply struggling to get by with government support.  How would this nation look with those 47 million Americans on food stamps without that access or these 12 million unemployed not receiving any support?  It would look like the US did during the Great Depression.  In other words, we are one food stamp payment and one insurance payment away from reliving the darkest time in our nation’s financial history.  You would think that would create some urgency in Congress but here we are, days away from the new year and no solid reform on the table.

Little by little we have become a low wage service oriented society.  All we need to do is look at the top job sectors in this country by the number of people employed:

In the past, you would expect to see higher paying manufacturing jobs near the top but that is no longer the case.  Our two top occupations are retail salespersons and cashiers.  You can see that it is becoming increasingly hard to get by with blue collar work at least given the cost of goods in the country.  Many view the only option out as a college education butbe suspicious about the levels of debt you take on and the quality of the school you attend (a selection of your career is also important).

This leads us to the next leg of the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling.

Leg two:  Debt Ceiling

Raising the debt limit is nothing new:

What is new, however is that our debt ceiling is now larger than our annual GDP.  Like crossing the Rubicon this is a critical new stage.  We will hit the $16.4 trillion limit on December 31.  All of this is happening at the end of the year and there is now a sense of urgency although all of this was expected.  Politically not much is happening because there is very little to gain from taking away the punchbowl.  This is why the Fed never stepped in to stop the housing bubble from going way overboard.  Yet this is the reason for their existence to monitor the deep financial health of our banking system and not allow for this kind of graft to occur.  In many ways they have failed to live up to this mission.  If Congress does pass anything expect it to be watered down to the point of uselessness.  We’ll be back dealing with these issues one year from now.

Leg three:  Taxes and spending

If we reach no fiscal cliff solution, taxes will go up on virtually everyone:

Source:  CNN Money

These are sizeable gains given how tepid the economic recovery has been.  For many poor Americans they are already cash strapped as is.  The problem of course is we have been spending way beyond our means for well over a decade and the bill is coming due (since the 1970s we have been deficit spending).  Who will pay?  No one really wants to pay.  So we are left with a Congress that represents the wealthy and has lost touch with the public making this:

Only 4 percent of US families make more than $200,000 a year (2 percent make more than $250,000).  Yet this is all we hear about in the media as if this was the standard to go by.  Again, the real picture is rarely reported.  The three legged stool is now very wobbly and is tilting over.  Unfortunately there are only hard choices ahead.  In our current global economy low wages are being pushed on countries like Greece and Spain for example.  The more they resist, the longer their unemployment rate will stay high.  This is the unfortunate reality.  How can you compete with people making $1 a day?  Is this the future for our low skilled workforce?  The ideal scenario would have been for the overall economy to grow and revenues would have increased because of this.  That is not the case.  The fiscal cliff is very real but something that has been coming down the pipeline for many decades.

Armed Citizens Make the Difference!!!

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!!
Mark Matheny
December 29, 2012

The liberal left wants to make us believe that armed citizens make virtually no difference when it comes to stopping crimes from happening.

Here is a study from the Cato Institute (Feb. 8, 2012)  that says otherwise! :

Cato Institute study says armed citizens prevent thousands of crimesBy Bruce Vielmetti of the Journal SentinelFeb. 8, 2012 | Researchers at the Cato Institute have reviewed eight years worth of news reports about shooting in self-defense and conclude, "the vast majority of gun owners are ethical and competent, and tens of thousands of crimes are prevented each year by ordinary citizens with guns."
The libertarian Washington, D.C. think tank has released "Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens," just a few days after Wisconsin's first instance of a concealed carry permit holder shooting at an armed robber, at a Milwaukee grocery store. In fact, the incident is already on the Cato Institute's interactive map that accompanies the report.

The report's authors argue that because only when a citizen actually shoots a criminal subject does the incident make the news, there are likely thousands of times when the mere display of a legal weapon stops a crime from happening.  But the study also acknowledges that prior estimates range widely, from less than a million to more than 2 million a year. »Read Full Blog Post

US Soldier Suicides Outnumber Combat Deaths In 2012

CBS News DC
December 29, 2012

Editor's Note: Luke 21:26
Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – American soldier suicides continue to outnumber combat-related deaths in 2012, and the trajectory for soldier suicides continues to get worse.

Statistics released by the Department of the Army show that through November potentially 303 active-duty, Reserve and National Guard soldiers committed suicide. As of Dec. 7, Stars and Stripes reports that 212 soldiers have died in combat-related deaths in Afghanistan.

The Army set a grim new record of 177 potential active-duty cases with 2012 coming to a close on Tuesday – 64 of these cases remain under investigation, 113 have been confirmed.

Read the entire article

This is My Kind of Teacher

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!!
Mark Matheny
Secember 29, 2012

Notice the Weapon on the teacher's back!!!

Children of President Obama, media elite go to schools with armed security guards

Natural News
Dec 26, 2012

If the elites in our country are anything they are consistent. Consistently hypocritical.

In a passionate speech just days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre made what many saw as a bold, outside-the-box suggestion for keeping schools safer moving forward: Put trained, armed guards in them as a way to thwart future attacks by well-armed lunatics and crazies who are doped up on psychotropic drugs:

…[F]or all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one – nobody – has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works? The only way to answer that question is to face up to the truth. Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free School Zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them. And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.

The politics of hypocrisy

Mocked by an absurdly biased mainstream media, labeled as “crazy” by left-wing pundits and politicians, LaPierre went on to point out the blatant hypocrisy of those who have condemned him and his suggestion as unworkable, unwise and simply unthinkable:

How have our nation’s priorities gotten so far out of order? Think about it. We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses – even sports stadiums – are all protected by armed security. We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers. Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family – our children – we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it.

This hypocrisy was epitomized by none other than NBC‘s David Gregory, who badgered LaPierre over his stance during a Dec. 23 interview:

You proposed armed guards in school. We’ll talk about that in some detail in a moment. You confronted the news media. You blamed Hollywood and the gaming industry. But never once did you concede that guns could actually be part of the problem. Is that a meaningful contribution, Mr. LaPierre, or a dodge?

In trying to be too clever by half, Gregory went on. Citing mass shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech, both incidents in which armed guards or police officers were present on the grounds, he tried to bait LaPierre: “But you would concede that, as good as an idea as you think this is, it may not work. Because there have been cases where armed guards have not prevented this kind of massacre, this kind of carnage. I want you would concede that point, wouldn’t you?”

Only the privileged deserve protection?

Not so surprisingly, Gregory himself conveniently left out the fact that he sends his children to the Quaker school Sidwell Friends where there is a security department consisting of 11 personnel, according to the Weekly Standard, many of whom are police officers and therefore presumed armed.

But even if they aren’t, Gregory’s kids – and those of a number of political and media elites who also send their children there – will benefit from the full-time Secret Service protection afforded Obama’s children, who attend the school. The others whose children attend Sidwell represent a cornucopia of voices now calling for more gun laws, stricter gun control and outright gun bans.

Finally, there is this: Gregory smugly asserted that the armed guards at Columbine and Virginia Tech did nothing to prevent the armed attacks on those schools.

Fine. But I have to ask: Would he consider placing his children in a school without armed guards? Is he willing to take a chance with the lives of his kids to practice what he and others who hold his point of view (and who also have kids in elite, well-protected schools) condescendingly preach?

We here at Natural News highly doubt it.

Sources:

http://www.weeklystandard.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

http://www.nydailynews.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com

The internet is leaving children brain-dead: Inventor warns 'Google generation who spend life in front of screens are losing creativity and skills'

Daily Mail
December 26, 2012

One of Britain's leading inventors has warned that  a 'Google generation' who rely on the internet for  everything are in danger of becoming 'brain-dead'.

Trevor Baylis, who invented the wind-up radio, said children are losing creativity and practical skills because they spend too much time in front of screens.

The 75-year-old said he fears that the next generation of inventors is being lost, with young people often unable to make anything with their hands.

Trevor Baylis, inventor of the wind up radio, has warned the internet is leaving children 'brain-dead'

But he said children could rediscover vital skills if schools used Meccano and other practical toys.

Mr Baylis said: 'Children have  got to be taught hands-on, and not to become mobile phone or computer dependent.

'They should use computers as and when, but there are so many people playing with their computers nowadays that spend all their time sitting there with a stomach.

 

More...

• Welcome to the world of 'lifeloggers' - who record EVERYTHING (using technology like a mini camera that takes a photo every 30 seconds and uploads it onto the net)
• Google working on an 'X phone' and 'X tablet' to take on rivals Apple and Samsung

'They are dependent on Google searches. A lot of kids will become fairly brain-dead if they become so dependent on the internet, because they will not be able to do things the old-fashioned way.'

Recalling how his career had its roots in the very different world in which he grew up, he said he was  about five or six years old when he began to invent devices. 'During the war, when I was not at school I used to go out and collect the rubbish,' said Mr Baylis.

'One day I was out and went to this house around the corner  from where I grew up in Southall, Middlesex, and this lady said, “I've got a box of stuff for you Trev, you'd better get a wheelbarrow.” So I picked up this thing and on the way back I was intrigued and I looked inside and it turned out to be a huge Meccano set.

Inventor Trevor Baylis says today's children are dependent on Google searches

'If I wanted to make a five-wheeled motor car then I could, or a forklift truck. And that's really what it is about, because that stays with you all of your life.'

The inventor, who was awarded the OBE in 1997, believes that  simple challenges in schools  using tools such as Meccano  model kits would give children invaluable skills.

Read the entire article