BLACK SLAVE OWNERS! THE DIRTY SECRET THE LEFT DOES NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT!

BLACK SLAVE OWNERS

In an 1856 letter to his wife Mary Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee called slavery "a moral and political evil." Yet he concluded that black slaves were immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially and physically.The fact is large numbers of free Negroes owned black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society at large. In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slaveholding states.

BUT WITH CALCULATING CYNICAL PURPOSE THE DEMOCRAT/PROGRESSIVE BLACK NEGRO ALLIANCE WILL HIDE THIS TRUTH .. TO GRAB EVERYTHING THEY CAN FROM THIS CON!  THE CONSERVATIVE AMERICANS WHO HAVE BEEN HAMMERED BY THIS LIE HAVE COM ETO BELIEV IT OR AT LE#AST ACCEPT ITS SEMI VERACITY JUST SO THEY CAN "GET ALONG"

JOSEPH GOEBELS SAID IT BEST ... AND THESE ANTI AMERICA ASSHOLES HAVE LEARNED THE WAY WELL.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).     

In the rare instances when the ownership of slaves by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black slave masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white slaveholder and had been unable to legally manumit them. Although this did indeed happen at times, it is a misrepresentation of the majority of instances, one which is debunked by records of the period on blacks who owned slaves. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2).

According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slaveholding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country's leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.

To return to the census figures quoted above, this 28 percent is certainly impressive when compared to less than 1.4 percent of all American whites and less than 4.8 percent of southern whites. The statistics show that, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters.

The majority of slaveholders, white and black, owned only one to five slaves. More often than not, and contrary to a century and a half of bullwhips-on-tortured-backs propaganda, black and white masters worked and ate alongside their charges; be it in house, field or workshop. The few individuals who owned 50 or more slaves were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as slave magnates.

In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more slaves The largest number, 152 slaves, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro slave magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 slaves, was Antoine Dubuclet, a sugar planter whose estate was valued at (in 1860 dollars) $264,000 (3). That year, the mean wealth of southern white men was $3,978 (4).

In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned slaves; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented slave holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were slave owners (6).

In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro slaveowner. In Black Masters. A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak write a sympathetic account of Ellison's life. From Ellison's birth as a slave to his death at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own speculation, as to why a former slave would become a magnate slave master.

At birth he was given the name April. A common practice among slaves of the period was to name a child after the day or month of his or her birth. Between 1800 and 1802 April was purchased by a white slave-owner named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of carpentry, blacksmithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping.

On June 8, 1816, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly slaves of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the slave he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the slave's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."

Although lawmakers of the time could not envision the incredibly vast public welfare structures of a later age, these stipulations became law in order to prevent slaveholders from freeing individuals who would become a burden on the general public.

Interestingly, considering today's accounts of life under slavery, authors Johnson and Roak report instances where free Negroes petitioned to be allowed to become slaves; this because they were unable to support themselves.

Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia-1995) was written by Ervin L. Jordan Jr., an African-American and assistant professor and associate curator of the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia library. He wrote: "One of the more curious aspects of the free black existence in Virginia was their ownership of slaves. Black slave masters owned members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free blacks were encouraged to sell themselves into slavery and had the right to choose their owner through a lengthy court procedure."

In 1816, shortly after his manumission, April moved to Stateburg. Initially he hired slave workers from local owners. When in 1817 he built a gin for Judge Thomas Watries, he credited the judge nine dollars "for hire of carpenter George for 12 days." By 1820 he had purchased two adult males to work in his shop (7). In fewer than four years after being freed, April demonstrated that he had no problem perpetuating an institution he had been released from. He also achieved greater monetary success than most white people of the period.

On June 20, 1820, April appeared in the Sumter District courthouse in Sumterville. Described in court papers submitted by his attorney as a "freed yellow man of about 29 years of age," he requested a name change because it "would yet greatly advance his interest as a tradesman." A new name would also "save him and his children from degradation and contempt which the minds of some do and will attach to the name April." Because "of the kindness" of his former master and as a "Mark of gratitude and respect for him" April asked that his name be changed to William Ellison. His request was granted.

In time the black Ellison family joined the predominantly white Episcopalian church. On August 6, 1824 he was allowed to put a family bench on the first floor, among those of the wealthy white families. Other blacks, free and slave, and poor whites sat in the balcony. Another wealthy Negro family would later join the first floor worshippers.

Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring slaves in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. From February 1817 until the War Between the States commenced, his business advertisements appeared regularly in newspapers across the state. These included the Camden Gazette, the Sumter Southern Whig and the Black River Watchman.

Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap slave labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that whites dealt only with other whites. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.

In his book, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. writes that, as the great conflagration of 1861-1865 approached: "Free Afro-Virginians were a nascent black middle class under siege, but several acquired property before and during the war. Approximately 169 free blacks owned 145,976 acres in the counties of Amelia, Amherst, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Prince William and Surry, averaging 870 acres each. Twenty-rune Petersburg blacks each owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the war."

Jordan offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-slave blacksmith, owned two slaves, a house valued at $1,376, and $500 in other properties at his death in 1863." Jordan wrote that "some free black residents of Hampton and Norfolk owned property of considerable value; 17 black Hamptonians possessed property worth a total of $15,000. Thirty-six black men paid taxes as heads of families in Elizabeth City County and were employed as blacksmiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oystermen and day laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 blacks owned a total of $41,158 in real estate and personal property.

The general practice of the period was that plantation owners would buy seed and equip~ ment on credit and settle their outstanding accounts when the annual cotton crop was sold. Ellison, like all free Negroes, could resort to the courts for enforcement of the terms of contract agreements. Several times Ellison successfully sued white men for money owed him.

In 1838 Ellison purchased on time 54.5 acres adjoining his original acreage from one Stephen D. Miller. He moved into a large home on the property. What made the acquisition notable was that Miller had served in the South Carolina legislature, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and while a resident of Stateburg had been governor of the state. Ellison's next door neighbor was Dr. W.W. Anderson, master of "Borough House, a magnificent 18th Century mansion. Anderson's son would win fame in the War Between the States as General "Fighting Dick" Anderson.

By 1847 Ellison owned over 350 acres, and more than 900 by 1860. He raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and slaves. In 1840 he owned 30 slaves, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine slaves. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison's sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.

In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a slave 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state's average for whites. And Ellison owned more slaves than 99 percent of the South's slaveholders.

Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "slave breeder." Slave breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of slaves under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited slaves (9). Nevertheless, in 1840 Ellison secretly began slave breeding.

While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields. As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female slaves at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His slaves were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem slaves.

As with the slaves of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's slaves ran away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. On at least one occasion Ellison hired the services of a slave catcher. According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s, Ellison hired him to run down "a valuable slave. Andrews caught the slave in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.

William Ellison died December 5, 1861. His will stated that his estate should pass into the joint hands of his free daughter and his two surviving sons. He bequeathed $500 to the slave daughter he had sold.

Following in their father's footsteps, the Ellison family actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the war. They also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds, treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate currency they held. At the end, all this valuable paper became worthless.

The younger Ellisons contributed more than farm produce, labor and money to the Confederate cause. On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.P. Galliard and A.H. Boykin, local white men who knew that Buckner was a Negro. Although it was illegal at the time for a Negro to formally join the Confederate forces, the Ellison family's prestige nullified the law in the minds of Buckner's comrades. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895 he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a "faithful soldier."

Following the war the Ellison family fortune quickly dwindled. But many former Negro slave magnates quickly took advantage of circumstances and benefited by virtue of their race. For example Antoine Dubuclet, the previously mentioned New Orleans plantation owner who held more than 100 slaves, became Louisiana state treasurer during Reconstruction, a post he held from 1868 to 1877 (10).

A truer picture of the Old South, one never presented by the nation's mind molders, emerges from this account. The American South had been undergoing structural evolutionary changes far, far greater than generations of Americans have been led to believe. In time, within a relatively short time, the obsolete and economically nonviable institution of slavery would have disappeared. The nation would have been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.

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NOTES

1. The American Negro: Old World Background and New World Experience, Raymond Logan and Irving Cohen New York: Houghton and Mifflin, 1970), p.72.

2. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South, Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak New York: Norton, 1984), p.64.

3. The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color, Gary Mills (Baton Rouge, 1977); Black Masters, p.128.

4. Male inheritance expectations in the United States in 1870, 1850-1870, Lee Soltow (New Haven, 1975), p.85.

5. Black Masters, Appendix, Table 7; p.280.

6. Black Masters, p. 62.

7. Information on the Ellison family was obtained from Black Masters; the number of slaves they owned was gained from U.S. Census Reports.

8. In 1860 South Carolina had only 21 gin makers; Ellison, his three sons and a grandson account for five of the total.

9. Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States, Carl N. Degler (New York, Macmillan, 1971), p.39;
     Negro Slavery in Louisiana, Joe Gray Taylor (Baton Rouge, 1963), pp. 4041.

10. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, Eric Foner (New York; Harper & Row, 1988), p. 47; pp. 353-355.(THIS ARTICLE IS COPYRIGHTED AND IS PROVIDED HERE COURTESY OF THE BARNES REVIEW)

WAR ON POVERTY IS A SOCIALIST OLIGARCHY SCAM TO STEAL THE WEALTH OF AMERICA WHILE REDISTRIBUTING IT

We’ve Spent $22 Trillion on War on Poverty. What Have We Achieved?

Since President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared “war on poverty,” U.S. taxpayers have spent $ 22 trillion on so-called anti-poverty programs—a figure slightly less than the national debt.
WHEN LYNDON JOHNSON CREATED THE MODERN WELFARE STATE IN 1964.. HE SAID...

"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference... I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years".

 
In 1969, just 2.8 million Americans received food stamps. Today, over 47 million Americans are on food stamps. One contributing factor to the massive expansion of the food stamp program is the crony capitalism that has cropped up around the anti-poverty program.

Soda makers, for example, bag an estimated $4 billion a year in taxpayer money through the food stamp program. Efforts to kill the so-called “soda subsidy” have been met with fierce resistance and lobbying by the soda industry.

In Florida, State Senator Ronda Storms (R-Valrico) introduced a bill last year that would keep taxpayer-funded SNAP benefits from being spent on non-essential items like sodas, candy, chips, ice cream, and other junk foods.

“The biggest opponents I have right now are Coca Cola, the soda companies, the chip companies and the convenience store operators,”

“We are talking about a government benefit,” said Wood. “And therefore, in my mind, we can restrict how that benefit is utilized.”

Companies that administer Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards profit when the welfare rolls swell. Since 2004, for example, JP Morgan, which donated $808,799 to Barack Obama in 2008, has made at least $560,492,596 running EBT programs for 18 states.

Despite the $15 trillion U.S. taxpayers have spent since the war on poverty’s inception, poverty in America is largely unchanged. This week, figures from the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that nearly 50 million Americans live below the federal poverty line.

It’s been 50 years now since the federal government launched its “War on Poverty.” But the numbers just released by the Census Bureau suggest we’re in a losing battle.

The poverty rate now stands at 14.5 percent. That’s a drop from the previous rate of 15 percent. But don’t celebrate too quickly. The new rate is almost exactly the poverty rate we had in 1967, only three years after President Lyndon Johnson announced his war.

To put it in further perspective: The poverty rate in 1950 was 32.2 percent. It dropped steadily throughout the ’50s, and had been nearly cut in half before the War on Poverty began. After that, the rate declined slightly, then leveled out.

More than 100 million — about one third of the U.S. population — receives aid from at least one welfare program.

That was $22 trillion ago. That’s right, trillion with a “t.” A 22 with 12 zeros behind it. To understand how much that is, if you laid a trillion $1 bills end to end, they would reach the sun. Now multiply that by 22. That’s enough for 11 round trips.

In short, it’s a lot of money. Yet the poverty rate is essentially the same as it was 50 years ago.

The federal government runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing and medical care to low-income Americans. Federal and state spending on these programs last year was $943 billion (not counting Social Security, Medicare or unemployment insurance).

This money is going to a lot of people. More than 100 million — about one third of the U.S. population — receives aid from at least one welfare program. The average cost per recipient in 2013? $9,000. If converted into cash, current means-tested spending is five times what’s needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States.

So how can the poverty rate be practically the same? You have to understand two things.

One is that, incredibly, the Census Bureau counts almost none of the $943 billion in yearly welfare spending as family “income.” It acts as though that money doesn’t exist. And because the government counts a family as poor if its income falls below specified thresholds, a lot of people are being, in essence, mislabeled as poor.

That leads to the second thing we have to understand. When most people hear that a family is living in poverty, they naturally picture people suffering from significant material deprivation. They imagine people without enough food or clothing, or without a decent roof over their heads.

Sadly, of course, such conditions do exist for some Americans. But government surveys show that many of those officially designated as poor are surprisingly well-off.

Less than 2 percent are homeless, and only one in 10 live in mobile homes. The typical house or apartment of the poor is in good repair and uncrowded. Indeed, the typical “poor” family has air conditioning, cable or satellite TV, and a computer in the home. Forty percent have a wide-screen HDTV. Another 40 percent have Internet access.

So should we consider War on Poverty to be a success? Hardly. It was designed, according to Johnson, to increase self-sufficiency. Individuals and families who needed a hand up would get it, but the ultimate goal was to shrink the welfare rolls and transform the poor, Johnson said, from “tax-eaters” to “taxpayers.”

“Judged by that standard, the War on Poverty has been a colossal flop,” writes poverty expert Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. “The welfare state has undermined self-sufficiency by discouraging work and penalizing marriage.”

Fifty years ago, only 7 percent of children were born outside of marriage, which remains the single greatest weapon against child poverty. Today, it’s 41 percent.

Yet President Obama plans to spend $13 trillion over the next decade on welfare programs that discourage work and marriage.

It’s time to turn this around. According to Mr. Rector, able-bodied recipients of cash, food and housing should be required to work or prepare for work as condition of receiving aid. Welfare’s penalties against marriage should be reduced.

In short, it’s time to return to Johnson’s original vision to “replace their despair with opportunity.”

   MORE:

DO YOU KNOW THAT OVER $22 Trillion HAS BEEN SPENT and THERE IS NOTHING ..... YES Nothing to Show for It!

They have taxed and borrowed and stolen Money from American Tax Payers to prop up this CON!!

Twenty Two trillion dollars: That’s how much American taxpayers have forked over in the name of helping the poor since 1964. And what do we have to show for it? A poverty rate that has barely budged, an entrenched bureaucracy, and a population — like that of Greece and Portugal, two welfare-state basket cases — increasingly dependent on government handouts.

These are the conclusions of a recent Cato Institute report on the American welfare state by Michael Tanner, Cato’s director of health and welfare studies and author of The Poverty of Welfare: Helping Others in Civil Society. It is hardly an encouraging read, to say the least.

When President Johnson declared war on poverty nearly half a century ago, writes Tanner, “the poverty rate in America was around 19 percent and falling rapidly.” Increasing prosperity brought about by the free market, coupled with strong civil institutions such as churches, charities, and fraternal organizations, was already accomplishing the unthinkable: making poverty, the general condition of mankind throughout most of history, a rarity in the United States. A rising tide, as Johnson’s predecessor observed, does indeed lift all boats.

The man at the helm of the ’64 ship of state, however, decided the tide wasn’t rising quickly enough and so he would help it along by filling buckets with water from the port side of the ship and emptying them on the starboard side. Not surprisingly, this strategy failed to increase the water level. Thus, despite $12 trillion in federal welfare spending and $3 trillion in state and local government welfare spending over the past 48 years, says Tanner, “the poverty rate never fell below 10.5 percent and is now at the highest level in nearly a decade” — 15.1 percent and climbing. “Clearly,” he adds, “we have been doing something wrong.”

Of course, that all depends on how one defines success in the war on poverty. For those on the receiving end of government handouts — not just the poor but also those paid to provide services to them, such as doctors and landlords — success is getting more taxpayer dollars every year; and by that standard, the war has been a remarkable achievement. “Government spends $20,610 for every poor person in America, or $61,830 per poor family of three,” Tanner reports. “Given that the poverty line for that family is just $18,530, we should have theoretically wiped out poverty in America many times over.”

The war on poverty has also been a rousing success for the bureaucracy. At the federal level alone there are now 126 separate anti-poverty programs administered by seven different cabinet agencies and six independent agencies. Then there are the hordes of social workers and government employees who administer the various programs. All of these people have a vested interest in the programs’ continuation and expansion. As a result, “anti-poverty programs are usually more concerned with protecting the prerogatives of the bureaucracy than with actually fighting poverty,” Tanner avers.

Needless to say, taxpayers have been the big losers in the war. Federal welfare spending has risen 375 percent (in constant 2011 dollars) since 1965. Total welfare spending has climbed almost as much: Governments are now disbursing $908 billion a year to alleviate poverty, up from $256 billion (also in constant dollars) in 1965. Moreover, notes Tanner:

Over the last decade the increase has been even more rapid. Federal welfare spending increased significantly under the Bush administration, but President Obama has thrown money at anti-poverty programs at an unprecedented rate. Since taking office, the Obama administration has increased spending on welfare programs by more than $193 billion.

While some of the spending hikes under Obama can be attributed to the recession, Tanner writes, “part of the program’s growth is due to conscious policy choices by this administration to ease eligibility rules and expand caseloads.” This, he points out, “undid many of the incentives contained in the 1996 Clinton welfare reform, which helped states to reduce welfare rolls.” As a result, the administration projects that “combined federal and state welfare spending will not drop significantly once the economy fully recovers,” with the annual tab reaching $1 trillion in 2014 and the 10-year total hitting $10.3 trillion — an amount that, Tanner calculates, comes to “$250,000 for every American currently living in poverty, or $1 million for every poor family of four.”

If all that money could really eradicate poverty, perhaps it would be worth it (constitutional and moral issues aside). Unfortunately, as we have seen, the massive amount of money already spent on that objective has failed to make a dent in the poverty rate. “In fact,” observes Tanner, “the only appreciable decline [in the poverty rate] occurred in the 1990s, a time of state experimentation with tightening welfare eligibility, culminating in the passage of national welfare reform.” The poor, despite the unprecedented redistribution of wealth in their favor, have been losers, too.

“The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable — giving poor people more food, better shelter, health care, and so forth — rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty,” Tanner remarks. “The best way to create wealth,” he explains, “is not through government action, but through the power of the free market.”

That means that if we wish to fight poverty, we should end those government policies — high taxes and regulatory excess — that inhibit growth and job creation. We should protect capital investment and give people the opportunity to start new businesses. We should reform our failed government school system to encourage competition and choice. We should encourage the poor to save and invest.

We should also set about shrinking all government transfer payments, not just those directed specifically at the poor. One of the ways politicians have bought off middle-class voters who oppose welfare for the poor is to offer those voters their own form of welfare such as Social Security and Medicare. Because of this, “government payouts, including middle-class entitlements, now account for more than a third of all wages and salaries in the United States,” according to Tanner. “Worse, if one includes salaries from government employment, more than half of Americans receive a substantial portion of their income from the government.”

“Any way that you look at it, we are rapidly becoming a society where more and more people rely on the government for their support.”

This is why our government is already nearly $18 trillion in debt with many more trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities as far as the eye can see. It is also why European welfare states are in their current precarious positions.

The grip of government dependence must be broken not just for the poor but for everyone. It is the only way to save both our dignity and our country’s financial future.