Will the Government in the near Future own all of Us?
The other day I read in my beloved WSJ an interesting statistic. It was qoted that by now more than 53% or more citizens are supported in one form or another by the government. It boggles the mind that over half of all people in the USA owe some part of their existence to the government. Of course that means that these people feel a heavy obligation to keep this form of government in place because they are indebted to it in one form or another. Many of you are much too young to realize that is exactly what the Nazi's did in Germany. They were the providers of jobs, of social welfare--child centers, milk--handouts, free or subsidized medical services and of course even greater benefits for everyone who joined the Nazi party. No wonder they did better and better at the polls. I was too little to understand any of this, but I was told how they did it.
Just a few years later the same scenario played out in East Germany where I grew up. The only difference was that the communists were forced on us by the Russian Army, which controlled that part of Germany until the fall of the Wall and Gorbachev's perestroyka. Soon after the take-over of the government, all private businesses were taken from their owners. The same thing happened to the farms--they became collectives. If you wanted a job you worked for the party. Bit by bit the SED, the communist party organ, out-voted all other parties. Soon, we all owed our existence to the party. A small percentage of people tried to maintain independence. I knew of a man doing small transportation jobs with two horses and a cart. It did not last long. He was not allowed to buy horse-food in the collective farm store anymore. That finished him, finished his business. He escaped to West Germany. That was before the wall was built. We lost about 500,000 people every year. They left for the West. The stupid rest of us, too afraid to start over again--like my mother, stayed put and voted 100% for the SED. That was because the voting booths were watched and the ballots exmined as soon as you left the open cubicle.
So, when I see that over fifty percent of our peopulation depend on some sort of subsidy, a creepy feeling rises within me. I have seen this play before and do not like it. Now consider, 53% or so is just half the population but they are people who tend to vote for those promising more of the same. Just look and see what is happening in Greece. With a national debt of 14.3 trillion, a number I cannot even wrap my mind around, we have over twenty nine million on wellfare, 40 million on food stamps, on medicaid, housing allowances, single mothers help, temporary money help, unemployment and on and on......add to that all the billions spen on foreign aid and wars; and I can only say "God help us!"
