The Bad Boss Tax and Yes Corporations Do Lobby for Entitlements and Yes it's a Form of Corporate Welfare

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The liberal leaning  Nation of Change had an interesting article titled The Bad Boss Tax.  Effectively it smacked corporations who pay low wages and then shifts the social cost to the taxpayers who are forced to pay for Medicaid, food stamps and other entitlements for the working poor.  The article even advocates for taxing these low wage paying corporations to reimburse the public for having to pony up with tax dollars to subsidize the working poor.

While I don't endorse increasing corporate taxation and would simply prefer that the corporate tax be totally abolished, the rational response is: what would happen if entitlements for the workers were also abolished?  What if corporations were forced to compete in the labor market as they once did before they figured out that they could bribe politicians to pass entitlement legislation for workers and shift the social costs of labor to the taxpayers?

Anyway, The Bad Boss Tax article does indeed raise some very interesting and valid points.

Vampire businesses

Just how much money are low-wage businesses draining from local, state and federal coffers? A study released in April by Americans for Tax Fairness, a coalition of more than 400 organizations that advocate progressive tax reform, estimated that Wal-Mart alone costs taxpayers $6.2 billion annually in public assistance. That report draws from a 2013 study by the Democratic staff of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which estimated that Wal-Mart cost taxpayers, on average, between $3,015 and $5,815 per worker.

Americans for Tax Fairness used the House Democrats’ study to extrapolate Wal-Mart’s public-assistance burden on each state. In Minnesota, for example, where Wal-Mart has 20,997 employees, the public burden totaled $92.7 million per year. That’s $92.7 million Wal-Mart isn’t paying in wages or benefits, but that instead is being borne by taxpayers — taxpayers who, of course, include Wal-Mart workers.

The study also notes that Wal-Mart profits from food stamps on the consumer end. According to the company’s own estimates, Wal-Mart captures 18 percent of the SNAP market, some $13.5 billion annually...

Wal-Mart isn’t alone; there are thousands of other low-wage employers...

Most of those minimum-wage workers are in the service industry, particularly in food service. And not coincidentally, taxpayers are also shelling out to prop up food industry wages. Studies last year from the National Employment Law Project and the University of California, Berkeley, showed that fast-food companies cost taxpayers an additional $7 billion per year in public assistance, with McDonald’s accounting for $1.2 billion. The Berkeley study notes that fast-food companies pay cashiers and other frontline workers a median wage of $8.69 an hour, and more than half of those workers rely on one or more public programs, compared to 25 percent of the workforce as a whole.

It's a damn poor reflection on our economic system that folks who work full time need public assistance.  Libertarians and free market proponents may scream about increasing the minimum wage as an assault on the poor and businesses but until they can convince Americans that free labor markets can and do deliver a level of non-entitlement dependent workers then all the sympathy will indeed be with statist solutions to mandate wages.

A long time ago I was a minimum wage worker and survived quite nicely - had enough money to fund a modest lifestyle complete with an apartment, a car, food on the table and even enough money left over for booze, clothes and entertainment.  But the dollar bought a whole lot more when I earned the minimum wage.

Why Republicans are FRAUDS on Obamacare and Entitlements

As the Republicans suddenly decide to defund the implementation of Obamacare after previously funding its implementation since the ACA was passed, folks are confused.  Liberals and ACA supporters keep asking "what are the Republicans afraid of?". From a logical point of view it makes more sense for Republicans to just let Obamacare proceed and fail.  After all, if Americans so oppose the ACA then they will be motivated to vote out of office those will gave them Obamacare and that's a boatload of Dems.

What is Obamacare? Obamacare is just another massively subsidized entitlement program that will cost an estimated $1 trillion. Do Republicans oppose new entitlements?  Of course not and Republicans have a long history of creating new entitlements and expanding existing entitlements.

The Republicans embraced and passed during the Bush years Medicare Part D or what is known as a massive prescription drug program for seniors.In fact, the program is estimated to cost a trillion bucks. Government program costs tend to be estimated over 10 years and the cost of most of these programs is vastly underestimated at the time entitlement bills pass.

Back in 2009, Forbes highlighted the hypocrisy of the Republicans.

Republican Deficit Hypocrisy

The human capacity for self-delusion never ceases to amaze me, so it shouldn’t surprise me that so many Republicans seem to genuinely believe that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Perhaps at one time they were, but those days are long gone.....

Recall the situation in 2003. The Bush administration was already projecting the largest deficit in American history–$475 billion in fiscal year 2004, according to the July 2003 mid-session budget review. But a big election was coming up that Bush and his party were desperately fearful of losing. So they decided to win it by buying the votes of America’s seniors by giving them an expensive new program to pay for their prescription drugs.

Recall, too, that Medicare was already broke in every meaningful sense of the term. According to the 2003 Medicare trustees report, spending for Medicare was projected to rise much more rapidly than the payroll tax as the baby boomers retired. Consequently, the rational thing for Congress to do would have been to find ways of cutting its costs. Instead, Republicans voted to vastly increase them–and the federal deficit–by $395 billion between 2004 and 2013...

However, the Bush administration knew this figure was not accurate...

Just to be clear, the Medicare drug benefit was a pure giveaway with a gross cost greater than either the House or Senate health reform bills how being considered. Together the new bills would cost roughly $900 billion over the next 10 years, while Medicare Part D will cost $1 trillion.

Moreover, there is a critical distinction–the drug benefit had no dedicated financing, no offsets and no revenue-raisers; 100% of the cost simply added to the federal budget deficit....

Bad as Obamacare is and it's certainly a pending disaster, at least the Dems attempted to fund it.  The Republicans made no such effort to fund Medicare Part D.

As Republicans and their wingnut pundits continue to thrash Obamacare as a new entitlement, they are also having fun calling Obama the Food Stamp President.  I decided to look into that allegation.

Bush is the REAL Food Stamp President

It’s true that the most recent figures from the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (provided to Factcheck.org/USA Today) show that a record number of people—some 46.2 million—are enrolled in the program. But the same data shows that more individuals were added to the program while George W. Bush was in office than have enrolled under Obama’s presidency: Under Bush, the program grew by 14.7 million individuals; under Obama so far, it’s grown by 14.2 million, and, as of October, was declining.

So Bush wins on volume, and Obama wins on velocity: In just a few years, President Obama managed to expand the program by nearly as much as Bush. But Obama didn’t do it without some help from his Republican predecessor, who approved policy changes that set the stage for the program’s current growth.

While it's probably true that food stamp recipients have now far exceeded usage under Bush because of the miserable economy, the point is that Bush and the Republicans facilitated the massive expansion of the food stamp program.

The political parties are masters at 'bread and circus' pandering to their respective bases.  After all, when have voters ever rejected a new or expanded entitlement program?  That is the core of the disease that is eating America.  Everybody wants something for nothing or they want something at the expense of somebody else.  When voters vote, they are actually voting for the police-military powers of the government to rob and plunder others for their exclusive benefit.

At the end of the day, these programs fail and the nation is bankrupted but that won't stop voters and politicians from living a grand delusion.  Entitlements sell at the ballot box and politicians love expanding their power.

I Really Don't Want to Talk About Immigration BUT.......

As a Yankee in Texas, I'm quite fond of the Texas multicultural heritage and I've encountered many fine hardworking immigrants.  Texas has a long history of Hispanic immigration.  In fact, many Texas Hispanics hail from families that have been here for hundreds of years and far longer than my 3rd generation immigrant status resulting from my grandparents migrating to the U.S. from Russia, Ireland and Germany in the early part of the 20th century.

As a hot potato political issue, immigration ranks near the top of contentious issues, along with the never ending social issues.  Some folks just really, really hate all immigrants and demand that all of them be deported.  I'm definitely not in that camp and I absolutely do subscribe to the view that nations benefit from immigration.  Healthy immigration is a win-win for everybody.

Heck, America is a nation that was built by industrious and hardworking immigrants.  I know how hard immigrants work because I've witnessed it up close and personal.  Immigrants are here because they want to work, they do work and Americans seems to have gotten lazy about working. I had a roof replaced a few years and August in central Texas is brutally hot. The roofing crew was all Hispanic and only the supervisor spoke English.  These workers worked like dogs in the blazing heat tearing off one roof and nailing down a new roof.  I had some tile replaced and a fine Hispanic tile man did the job on a Sunday along with his 13 year old daughter assistant who was delightful.  She manned the table saw outside, cut the tiles and gave them to her dad. She told me she loved working and helping her dad.  I could go on and on about my wonderful experiences with Hispanic tradesmen.

In my opinion, the immigrants who are here that are productively working should be legalized, given green cards and have the opportunity to apply for citizenship.  They earned it and they deserve it. However, I draw the line at entitlement dependent immigrants.  The immigrants that built America didn't need food stamps, Medicaid cards and other entitlements.  There are indeed immigrants in America who mooch of the taxpayers and the welfare system.

My immigration plan is simple: deport the entitlement dependent and keep those who work and demand nothing except the right to work.

Unfortunately, that's not how our immigration system works.  The US immigration system is designed to be welfare for businesses by massively importing cheap third world laborers who are so poor that they are eligible for entitlements.  This is basically a taxpayer subsidy to businesses.  Moreover, entitlement dependent immigrants are definitely not the type of immigrants that America needs.

The Obama Administration is already advertising that some form of subsidized-to-free medical care (either Medicaid or Obamacare) will be available to 14 million illegal immigrants as a benefit.  A government benefit is paid for by tax dollars.

Medicare and Medicaid already cost American taxpayers over $1 trillion a year and the government estimates that Obamacare subsidies will cost another trillion a year.  Obamacare is not only a huge subsidized disaster, it will force more folks into Medicaid. 

America Already Has Socialized Medicine - A Trillion for Medicare & Medicaid and Another Trillion for Obamacare Subsidies

Considering that America is rapidly morphing into a minimum wage economy because we've made the decision to offshore and outsource our once legendary manufacturing industries that produced high paid middle class workers, it's clear that the minimum wage economy will dramatically ratchet up entitlement dependency.  

Zero Hedge reports: This Is Bernanke's Minimum-Wage "Recovery" In Facts And Figures

A suddenly seemingly hawkish Ben Bernanke may be giving the impression he is preparing to taper because he feels confident enough about the recovery (just don't ask him about sudden dramatic rises in yields: that "puzzles" him). Yet as those who have been reading Zero Hedge for the past three years know, this jobs "recovery" is purely quantitative (not to mention seasonally adjusted): the quality of jobs regained is, in a word, abysmal, with the bulk of new job creation benefiting part-time and minimum-wage jobs.....

The lower-wage occupations that grew the most during the recovery include retail salespersons, food preparation workers, laborers and freight workers, waiters and waitresses, personal and home care aides, and office clerks and customer representatives.

To make matters worse, currency devaluation resulting from decades of deficit spending, mountains of fiat debt and nasty government policy decisions have not only decimated the middle class but has put workers in the poor house.

40% Of US Workers Now Earn Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage

Because America is now a nation where worker wages are no longer sufficient to cover basics like food, healthcare and shelter, the explosion of the entitlement dependent is shocking.  Nearly 50 million folks are on food stamps and its use rate is soaring. 100 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare (49 million) and Medicaid (50 million).  Those numbers are expected to grow substantially.

The Heritage Foundation reported that the immigration bill concocted by the so-called congressional Gang of 8 will cost $6.3 trillion, here.

To further complicate the mess, there are provisions and incentives in the immigration bill that actually encourages employers to fire Americans and hire newly legalized immigrants.

Gang of Eight Amnesty Bill Encourages Companies to Hire Illegal Aliens over American Workers

Immigration Bill's Health Care Provisions Could Get U.S. Workers Fired

The immigration bill not only stinks to high heaven, it's specifically designed to exclusive benefit newly legalized immigrants at the expense of American workers, as if American workers aren't already hurting and struggling to survive.

Before American can even begin to work on a sane immigration policy that is beneficial to everybody, it needs to first solve the entitlement problems.  With Libertarian leaning think tanks like CATO advocating for legalizing all illegals and opening our borders to everybody to create a borderless nation, none of them ever take into account the gargantuan cost of the welfare entitlement state and subsidizing corporate profits. We need to get Americans off the welfare rolls and back to work.  We need to become a nation where a days labor earns enough money to provides essentials like food and shelter without a welfare subsidy.

Until the entitlement state is demolished, re-engineered and/or massively downsized, there is no way to separate honest hardworking immigrants from the moochers who come here to mooch and many of them are caught up in the spiral of low wage jobs and poverty - folks just trying to survive in a global economy that has turned against them.

Between the non-working folks on welfare and the working poor on welfare, America has morphed into a hideous industrialized feudalistic society consisting of the rich and the serfs who serve them.  

35 Statistics About The Working Poor In America That Will Blow Your Mind

#1 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either "poor" or "low income".

#2 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 57 percent of all American children live in a home that is either "poor" or "low income".

#3 Back in 2007, about 28 percent of all working families were considered to be among "the working poor". Today, that number is up to 32 percent even though our politicians tell us that the economy is supposedly recovering.

#4 Back in 2007, 21 million U.S. children lived in "working poor" homes. Today, that number is up to 23.5 million.

#5 In Arkansas, Mississippi and New Mexico, more than 40 percent all of working families are considered to be "low income".

#6 Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent....

The above stats are not good signs.  In fact, they document the death of America's once prosperous middle class rather than portray a healthy, rising and vibrant middle class.  In America these days, it's all about documenting the rot and decay of our dying middle class - folks who have no futures.

The senate immigration bill will only further stress the already severely stressed American workers by importing entitlement dependent third world labor. It's a recipe for massive impoverishment of all workers, citizen or immigrant.

Want wages to rise?  Abolish the entitlements and force businesses to compete for unsubsidized labor in a free labor market. Maybe then we could talk about immigration.

Still, it makes no sense to flood America with tens of millions of immigrants when our own people are profoundly suffering from an economy that had hit the skids and put many Americans on skid row.

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The Government Subsidizes Junk Food and the Costly Lifestyle Diseases Resulting from Poor Nutrition

If there ever was a defining characteristic of insanity, it's got to be the US government. Only in America are taxpayers forced to subsidized unhealthy bad food that results in expensive to maintain lifestyle diseases that are also publicly funded. The Big Food and Big Pharm lobbies are determined to perpetually guarantee big profits through mandates and subsidies. The marriage of big government and big business has churned Americans into fat pharmaceutical dependent blimps.

Cato has a fascinating piece on this issue.

How Uncle Sam's Making Us Fat

The US Department of Agriculture is Exhibit A for foolish, wasteful federal policymaking: It spends billions subsidizing the same unhealthy foods it tells us to avoid.

This year, the USDA will spend more than $1 billion subsidizing the growth of four common food additives: corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, corn starch and soy oils (hydrogenated vegetable oil).

These additives "provide a cheap dose of sweetness and fat to a wide variety of junk food products," warns the US Public Interest Research Group. PIRG found that the USDA spent $18.2 billion from 1995 to 2011 to subsidize junk-food additives.

Yet, while some of your tax dollars pay for these junk-food additives, more pay for public-health education campaigns that strive to convince us to eat less and to eat better.

The USDA lectures and hectors us to avoid anything that's fatty, salty, sugary or filled with processed ingredients — like the ones our tax dollars subsidize.

Clearly, the Agriculture Department puts the D in double standard: The bureacuracy's left hand is at war with its right.

The government doesn't just subsidize nasty things like the manufacture of HFCS and hydrogenated oils, it also subsidizes the retail sale of these nasty products with food stamp subsidies.  Food stamps have been renamed SNAP, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, although there's nothing nutritious about the program.  Even liberal organizations are waking up to the stone cold reality that the government subsidizes junk food that makes folks sick and unhealthy. The farm bill passed by Congress is loaded with all kinds of subsidy horrors

Farm Bill Jackpot – How Much do Corporations Benefit from SNAP?

* Powerful food industry lobbying groups such as the American Beverage Association and the Snack Food Association teamed up to oppose health-oriented improvements to SNAP, at times working with anti-hunger groups

* At least nine states have proposed bills to make health-oriented improvements to SNAP, but none have passed, in part due to opposition from the food industry In one year, nine Walmart Supercenters in Massachusetts together received more than $33 million in SNAP dollars—over four times the SNAP money spent at farmers markets nationwide

*In two years, Walmart received about half of the one billion dollars in SNAP expenditures in Oklahoma

* J.P. Morgan Chase holds contracts in 24 states to administer SNAP benefits, indicating concentrated power and a lack of competition

*In New York, a seven-year deal originally paid J.P. Morgan Chase $112 million for EBT services, and was recently amended to add $14.3 million—an increase of 13 percent States are seeing unexpected increases in administrative costs, while banks and other private contractors are reaping significant windfalls from the economic downturn and increasing SNAP participation.

While food stamps supporting liberals are not exactly recognizing that the government freebies that they so cherish are unhealthy, they are beginning to wake up to the reality and some of them are lobbying for nutritional improvement in the junk food laden food stamp program.

As a Libertarian, I oppose the food stamp program.  That said, I don't believe it will ever vanish.  However, it can be vastly improved by restricting food stamp use to fruits, vegetable, meats and dairy. Food stamp users are notorious for loading up with junk food, sugary cereals for their kids and soda.  They don't have the common sense to eat sensibly which is precisely why junk food needs to be banned from the food stamp program.

But there's a hugely expensive companion problem to the food stamp insanity and junk food subsidies.  Bad food results in lifestyle diseases that are very expensive to treat.  Not only are American taxpayers forced to pay for the junk food that makes folks sick with lifestyle diseases, they are also forced to pay for their healthcare.  In fact, Medicare and Medicaid are costing American taxpayers near $1 trillion a year, here.

With 60% of the American people already on some form of taxpayer subsidized healthcare, America is already a socialist nation and most Americans absolutely do demand government provided healthcare and other entitlements.  Support for Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs remains quite strong. Americans are just like everybody else – they want something for free (translation: at the expense of somebody else) but there is no such thing as a free anything and anything the government does is very costly, inefficient and life threatening.

America spends more on healthcare than any industrialized nation and by a very wide margin.

Also, there is no corresponding increase in American longevity considering the huge amount of money we pour into health care. In fact, we keep going backwards, 3rd world nations are surpassing us and we ranked 42nd in longevity.

U.S. ranks just 42nd in life expectancy

Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries. For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles...

Among the other factors:

•Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

•“The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy,” said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. “We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times.”

Tragically, American is a nation swimming with fat entitlement dependent pigs. Of course, the government itself is responsible for this nightmare by doling out freebies, free junk food and free healthcare to those who simply refuse to eat or live responsibly.

Kids are eating high calorie, low nutrition diets that primarily consist of simple carbohydrates, sugar, corn syrup, fats and sodium. Much of what kids eat in the schools is taxpayer funded garbage. Even more horrifying is that Migration Information reported that schools actually sell advertising to junk food purveyors by signing “"pouring rights" contracts that permit snack and soft drink companies to advertise to children on school vending machines, scoreboards, book covers, t-shirts, and news programs shown on televisions in the classroom., here.

Only in America do we kill our kids for profit and do it with our tax dollars!!

A group called Healthyamericans.org reported in June 2009 that "Today, we spend nearly $800 billion on health problems that are directly linked to lifestyle and poor health habits each year-about one third of our total health care spending…” and that article was quoting a congress critter, here.

America can't begin to solve its immense economic and fiscal problems because we remain a nation of spoiled rotten morons, from the political class and all the way down to the people who vote to hire the police powers of the state to forcibly steal from somebody else to give them what they think they want or deserve.  So long as folks are allowed to vote for politicians who will keep them fat, lazy, sick and entitlement dependent, the soul of a once proud, independent, prosperous and responsible people will continue to die and morph into something so vile that neither America nor Americans will ever be restored to our glorious legacy of being the the strongest, most prosperous and freest people in human history.

The Free Shit Army Rules

The website Government Gone Wild (governmentgonewild.org) has some incredibly enlightening videos including this short but highly instructive 3 minute video:

 Land of The Freebies, Home of the Enslaved

Americans need to acknowledge the bitter truth: America is no longer the land of the free and the economically prosperous. America is very much a fascist/socialist/entitlement hell that is so typical of every bankrupt western nation that is imploding under the weight of unsustainable entitlements.  Even more disturbing is that both Republican and Democrat voters literally voted for this nightmare that is wiping out the once strong and prosperous middle class.

No one describes the situation better than James Quinn, a brilliantly astute economic pundit whose website, theburningplatform.com, is loaded with extraordinary, insightful and well documented data on the true state of the union.  It's not a pretty sight.

Quinn frequently talks about what he dubs "The Free Shit Army", here.

I've come to the conclusion that the middle class of this country has been caught in a pincer movement by two armies. My definition of the Middle Class is households making between $50,000 and $150,000 per year. The Free Shit Army is attacking us on the left. The middle class has been the backbone of the country, doing the heavy lifting in this country. They get up every morning and trudge off to work to support their families. The Free Shit Army sleeps in. They have chosen to not educate themselves in order to advance in our society.

Politicians have enabled them to stay in poverty by providing welfare, disability, food stamps, and tax incentives that make their lives just comfortable enough to not work. If you provide money to people who are classified as disabled, you get more disabled. The Free Shit Army has 50% more disabled than the general population. If you pay people for not working, why should they work? The middle class works and pays their taxes. These taxes are then redistributed to the Free Shit Army.

The second pincer movement on the middle class has been conducted by a stealthier army. This army has experts in propaganda, misinformation, and obfuscation. I call them the Ruling Elite Army. The generals are the ultra-wealthy CEOs of Wall Street banks and mega-corporations. Their armor divisions are manned by the corporate mainstream media. They are excellent at laying down a great smoke screen before blasting away. The infantry is manned by 535 Congressional officers with thousands of corporate lobbyist foot soldiers. This army has been given the mission to capture the supplies of the middle class.

The middle class were not prepared for the assaults they have been fending off. They became soft and satisfied. They stopped training. They became distracted by their gadgets, delusions of home wealth, and fear of phantom terrorist enemies behind every bush. The propaganda machine of their true enemies has convinced the middle class that foreign enemies are massing. The enemy is within. The middle class will need to sacrifice and go to war against two enemies. Are they up to the task? I'm not sure.

Quinn then offers up real solutions for real problems that are outlined under the following categories: Political System, Economic Policy, Education Policy, Energy Policy, National Defense/Foreign Policy, Immigration and Social Issues.

The cures detailed by James Quinn are pretty much identical to the cures that have been advocated by the good doctor Ron Paul for decades.  Both Quinn and Ron Paul have correctly diagnosed the disease and the medicine required to cure the disease.

It's not likely that the America people will listen to what needs to be done or take the life saving medicine to restore their liberty and prosperity because, well, the people are just too far gone and too corrupted. Once the American people made the ballot box decision to hire the police powers of the government to steal from others at the point of a gun to give them what they demand and and think they deserve, the American people signed their own death warrant and voted themselves into totalitarian slavery. The American people now get to chew on a few crumbs and tossed bones that were picked clean by those who promised them the statist cornucopia of plenty.

For a while, The Free Shit Army and their powerful ally, The Ruling Elite Army, were euphoric.  Everything appeared to be working splendidly, until one day it just was no more.  Just ask the Greeks.  

America Really is DEBT MAN WALKING, Fedzilla Spends $114,253 Per Second on Revenues of $73,043 Per Second

Drudge had a big ominous headline today.

Federal Deficit Highest Since 1940s

The federal deficit is higher than it has been since the 1940s, in the years immediately after World War II.

A new visual from the "Face the Facts USA," a non-partisan election project from George Washington University, shows the federal deficit has risen significantly under President Barack Obama, and that the government is increasingly spending money it doesn't have.

In every second of 2011, for example, the government spent $114,253—even though it was only taking in $73,043 in revenue. According to Face the Facts, that means the federal government spent $41,210 every second that it didn't actually have.

For the most part, Americans remain clueless relative to the significance of this incredible fact (America being broke and bankrupt) and that's largely because Americans perceive the government as the perpetual cornucopia of plenty that has an infinite capacity to keep them in a style to which they have become accustomed. The massively unsustainable entitlement state absolutely will burst at the seams and fail, just as it has in Greece, Spain and other European nations.

Just how broke is America? We are currently spending about $3.8 trillion on tax revenues of about 2.3 trillion. The debt is over $15 trillion and climbing. Bush and the Republicans exploded the national debt in 8 years by $5 trillion. Obama has already increased the debt by another $5 trillion and counting in about 3 years. No effort is being made to rein in the spending. The government believes that it can literally spend its way out of national bankruptcy and economic ruin.

Think about the cuts that would be required to live within our means ($2.3 trillion in tax receipts). Well, the federal government doesn’t actually have $2.3 million to spend because Social Security receipts fly right out the window in benefits.

The interest on the national debt in 2011 was a staggering $454 billion, according to the Treasury's own website, here.  Of the $2.3 billion in 2011 federal revenues, $1.3 billion came from income taxes and $800 billion came from Social Security taxes, money that is supposed to be untouchable and not spent by Congress but the Social Security Trust Fund is routinely plundered.

Yes My Fellow Americans, Congress Really Did Steal Your Social Security

The White House budget reported that $780 billion was disbursed to SS recipients in 2011. USA Today reported that Medicare and Medicaid totaled a staggering $992 billion in 2011 ($554 billion for Medicare and $438 billion for Medicaid), here. At least 58% of the American people are dependent on government funded healthcare. There are other big entitlement programs like housing, food stamps and unemployment compensation, to name a few.

With Medicare and Medicaid eating up nearly $1 trillion of the $2.3 trillion in federal tax receipts, it's been reported that all federal entitlements now exceed total federal revenue.

Government Cash Handouts Now Top Tax Revenues

U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes for the first time since the Great Depression.

Households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010. That includes expanded unemployment benefits, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and stimulus spending, among other things.


But that’s more than the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes, an amount that has slumped largely due to the recession, according to an analysis by the Fiscal Times.

This cannot end well.  In fact, it will end very, very badly for the American people.  The day will dawn when they wake-up and discover that the government really wasn't the cornucopia of plenty as their fictitious standard of living gets nuked by their own delusions and they are blasted back to an era that few Americans are prepared for, namely, living on what they produce and without mountains of fiat debt and government entitlements.