I’m not sure there’s much percentage in talking about percentages.
Divvying folks into groups, and then relying on people to “stay” within their group — behaving according to one’s specifications — seems . . . kind of creepy.
Last year’s “Occupy” movement, with its relentless pitching of the “99 percent,” demonstrated that creepy/icky factor pretty well.
But Mitt Romney had to horn in on the action. “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” he said. These wards of the state, he went on to say, believe that
- they are victims
- government has a responsibility to care for them
- they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it
Furthermore, “these are people who pay no income tax,” Romney stated. “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Well, not all folks who are somehow “dependent on government” — a group ranging from Social Security retirees and the non-working poor to federal employees and agribusinesses and Solyndras feeding at the federal trough — necessarily want to increase their own ranks. Not a few are savvy enough to notice that the system that feeds them would, if larded up with more recipients, be made less capable of feeding them.
As for the logic of “not biting the hand that feeds you,” the advice of the late Thomas Szasz is pertinent: “maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.”
After all, many of the people who may qualify, technically, as being “dependent on government” would rather not be. And might like the option of being less encumbered by government “help.”
Mitt, I wouldn’t write them off yet.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
How can protection, think you, add to the wealth of a country? Can you by legislation add one farthing to the wealth of the country? You may, by legislation, in one evening, destroy the fruits and accumulation of a century of labour; but I defy you to show me how, by the legislation of this House, you can add one farthing to the wealth of the country. That springs from the industry and intelligence; you cannot do better than leave it to its own instincts. If you attempt by legislation to give any direction to trade or industry, it is a thousand to one that you are doing wrong; and if you happen to be right, it is work of supererogation, for the parties for whom you legislate would go right without you, and better than with you.
I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.
I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts.
Nobody would work for starvation wages if he were not in a situation in which he preferred such wages to not working at all.