165 Million Americans Are Dependents of the State, a Clear Majority of the 308 Million Americans Counted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2010

Over 80% of Infowars.com Poll Respondents Know Somebody On Government Dole

August 24, 2012

Infowars.com - Earlier this month, the establishment fount Forbes, a magazine fondly calling itself “the Capitalist Tool,” warned that an ever-creeping entitlement state and its confiscatory taxation policies may soon lead to a tyranny of the majority.

“Today, a majority of Americans have a direct financial interest in voting for representatives to ensure they keep collecting their benefits and salaries, making sure others are taxed to pay for it all,” Bill Wilson wrote on August 15 in an article entitled “165 Million Americans Are Dependents of the State: Is Tyranny Next?”

Wilson based his argument on research conducted by the staff of ranking Republican senator Jeff Sessions. The research revealed that over 107 million Americans are currently on the government dole.

“Add to that 46 million seniors collecting Medicare (subtracting out about 10 million on Supplemental Security Income, Medicaid, and other senior-eligible programs already included in Sessions’ means-tested chart) and 22 million government employees at the federal, state, and local level — and suddenly, over 165 million people, a clear majority of the 308 million Americans counted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2010, are at least partially dependents of the state,” Wilson explained.

Of that number, well over 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government, according to the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the U.S. Census.

Last year alone, the federal government spent 71.8 billion dollars on the food stamp program. The number of Americans on Medicaid grew from 34 million in 2000 to 54 million in 2011. Moreover, “federal housing assistance increased by a whopping 42 percent between 2006 and 2010,” writes Michael Snyder of The American Dream.

“Economically, America has descended into poverty,” the the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury in the Reagan administration, Paul Craig Roberts, writes today.

Roberts rolls through a depressing litany of statistics: one fourth of the work force is employed in jobs that pay less than $22,000, the poverty line for a family of four; 20.5 million Americans have incomes less than $9,500 per year, which is half of the poverty definition for a family of three; six million Americans exist solely on food stamps.

We asked Infowars.com readers if they have a family member or a friend or co-worker who is reduced to existing in part or whole on the government dole.

Close to half said somebody in their family is dependent on government assistance, while 39% said they know somebody outside their family on the dole. Only 18% of respondents said they do not know anybody reduced to taking money from the state.