What do you believe will happen to our country, and all of us, when most of us are getting benefits from the government but there are fewer and fewer of us paying into the system?
That is a challenging question, to say the least.
The Census Bureau noted recently that a record 49 percent of Americans -- about 147 million of us all told -- are living in households where at least one person is receiving at least one kind of benefit from the government. Moreover, the agency pointed out, more than three-fifths of all federal spending is in the form of checks written to individuals -- checks for which the government receives no services in return.
How does that compare with previous generations? Not very well, unfortunately. Back in 1940, only 18 percent of our people were in households where someone was getting a government benefit of one type or another.
Don't expect that alarming increase to turn around anytime soon, though. About 75 million baby boomers are just beginning to retire, and an additional 30 million or so people are soon going to be covered by ObamaCare -- if it is not repealed by Congress or overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
That means more than 100 million additional Americans using federal Social Security, Medicare and other health care benefits. And the weak economy has far more people than usual relying on food stamps and unemployment benefits. In addition, many of the 2 million Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are beginning to make use of the educational and health benefits to which they are (very rightly) entitled.
No one has yet figured out how to pay for everything we as a people desire. Medicare is heading for bankruptcy just a few years down the road, and one chunk of ObamaCare is already being abandoned after the Obama administration acknowledged it was financially unsustainable.
"The more households that are benefiting from the programs, the more difficult it is to rein in their costs," a spokesman for the pro-balanced-budget organization the Concord Coalition pointed out in a Bloomberg News article. "It's a troubling phenomenon," he added, and "it explains why it's politically difficult to deal with these things."
The problem is, as more and more Americans come to rely on government at all levels not just for the original basics it was supposed to provide -- such as national defense, police and fire protection, courts and so forth -- but for many of their daily needs, fewer will be putting money into the system. And those who are receiving benefits will be reluctant to see cutbacks, even if the alternative is a worsening of the economic crisis and the growth of our already-disastrous $14.9 trillion national debt.
In that kind of environment, do you have much confidence that the so-called "super committee" in Congress that has the job of formulating a proposal for trimming $1.5 trillion or so from budget deficits over the next 10 years is likely to find a great deal of public support, no matter what the panel may recommend?
We're afraid that's just not likely. In fact, the panel may not be able to reach any agreement even among its own members, let alone in the full Congress or in a way that the public will favor.
The borrowing and spending continue, and a dreadful day of reckoning awaits if we do not alter our course, and soon.