More than half of Americans depend on government subsidies

From RT.com – Gov­ern­ment depen­dency is on the rise, with more than half of all Amer­i­cans rely­ing on the gov­ern­ment for sur­vival. While the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is broad­en­ing eli­gi­bil­ity, US cit­i­zens increas­ingly also say they pre­fer it this way.

Amer­i­cans’ self-reliability has been decreas­ing as eli­gi­bil­ity for Med­ic­aid, food stamps, earned income tax credit, work pay tax credit and unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits have broad­ened since 2009 to allow more US cit­i­zens to enjoy them.

More than half of the US pop­u­la­tion – 165 mil­lion of 308 mil­lion Amer­i­cans – is now depen­dent on the state in some form. Of these, 107 mil­lion Amer­i­cans rely on gov­ern­ment wel­fare, 46 mil­lion seniors col­lect Medicare and there are 22 mil­lion gov­ern­ment employees.

The num­ber of Amer­i­cans on wel­fare have increased from 97 mil­lion to 107 mil­lion since Pres­i­dent Obama took office, accord­ing to research by Rank­ing Mem­ber of the Sen­ate Bud­get Com­mit­tee Jeff Ses­sions. The num­ber of Amer­i­cans on food stamps dur­ing the president’s term has risen by more than 14 million.

“Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job – they’d just send you a wel­fare check,” stated a recent anti-Obama tele­vi­sion advertisement.

And it seems that Amer­i­cans increas­ingly want it that way. In 2011, a report by Globes­can showed that the num­ber of US cit­i­zens who believe in the strength of a free mar­ket econ­omy dropped to 59 per­cent from 74 per­cent in the pre­vi­ous year, falling below Brazil and China. When Globes­can first con­ducted this sur­vey ten years ago, 80 per­cent of Amer­i­cans favored a free mar­ket eco­nomic system.

Those with the low­est annual incomes were more likely to oppose a free mar­ket economy.

This year’s annual Index on Depen­dence on Gov­ern­ment, released in Feb­ru­ary, found that since 2008, the Amer­i­can people’s depen­dence on gov­ern­ment has grown by 23 per­cent. The US gov­ern­ment broke a record last year, spend­ing the most on fed­eral assis­tance in the nation’s history.

The Her­itage Foun­da­tion found that on aver­age, Amer­i­cans who depend on fed­eral assis­tant received $32,748 in annual ben­e­fits, which is more than an aver­age Amer­i­can worker makes in a year. In 2011, the median annual pay­check was reported as $26,364.

“We expect the gov­ern­ment to take care of us from the cra­dle to the grave,” said an analy­ses in the Eco­nomic Col­lapse blog.

In 2010, more than 70 per­cent of fed­eral spend­ing went to depen­dence pro­grams – which is almost 2.5 times more what it used to be fifty years ago. In 1962, only 28.3 per­cent of fed­eral spend­ing was used for these purposes.

But the cost of these pro­grams does not go to those who reap the ben­e­fits. Half of all Amer­i­can house­holds pay no income taxes – the very half that is most likely to be granted wel­fare and food stamps.

As gov­ern­ment depen­dency increases, the cost of fed­eral assis­tance pro­grams will decrease with less peo­ple pay­ing for it.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Aug 23 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.