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Originally posted by Obie

The American Spectator criticized the film as intellectually incoherent and inaccurate, accusing Ferguson of blaming "a lot of bad people [with] economic and political views to the right of [his]."

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Originally posted by Cagary

The Wall Street Journal reports:


"Families were more dependent on government programs than ever last year.

Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived [in] households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008.

The share of people relying on government benefits has reached a historic high, in large part from the deep recession and meager recovery, but also because of the expansion of government programs over the years.

Means-tested programs, designed to help the needy, accounted for the largest share of recipients last year. Some 34.2% of Americans lived in a household that received benefits such as food stamps, subsidized housing, cash welfare or Medicaid (the federal-state health care program for the poor).

Another 14.5% lived in homes where someone was on Medicare (the health care program for the elderly). Nearly 16% lived in households receiving Social Security.

High unemployment and increased reliance on government programs has also shrunk the nation’s share of taxpayers. Some 46.4% of households will pay no federal income tax this year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. That’s up from 39.9% in 2007, the year the recession began."

Of course, this only refers to those who get “benefits” from the feds. Millions more live directly on salaries paid by the feds. And then there are the millions more who live on salaries paid to them because of federal subsidies, tax angles, legal requirements and so forth. Think of the lawyer working for Goldman Sachs whose job is to keep the company from running afoul of the SEC. Think of the paper shuffler working at the University of Maryland whose job only exist because the feds subsidize education. Think of the private contractor getting paid billions to build the biggest embassies in the world.

They are all zombies...all doing things that probably shouldn’t be done at all...all draining the economy of real wealth.

And there are so many of them that the mathematics of democracy have now turned against it. More zombies than productive citizens. More people with a stake in further federal spending than people with a interest in stopping it.

And so, the feds borrow. The feds spend. And more and more of the real economy shifts away from real production...and towards the zombie economy...of pretend work and make-believe production.

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Originally posted by Bullwinkle

Hawaii residents share the national debt - part of which was paid out to the banksters, entitlements and lord knows what else......

1) The U.S. National Debt Clock – Today’s reading is: $10,843,363,903,850.78
2) The U.S. Population Clock – Today’s reading is 305,940,836
Whipping out the calculator, that works out to $35,446

$35,446 per man woman and child.... I live within my means also, make sacrifices and dont get food stamps etc...

- like to say i have zero debt - 'cept the $35,446.00 the gov't has added to my tab.

see you at the occupation

as of 2/27/09 think its been reduced any?

http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/02/27/good-question-what-is-the-national-debt-per-person-in-the-united-states/

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