The U.S. is now on the verge of a symbolic threshold: the point at which more than half of all American households receive and accept transfer benefits from the government. Within living memory, the federal government has become an entitlements machine. As a day-to-day operation, it devotes more attention and resources to the public transfer of money, goods and services to individual citizens than to any other objective, spending more than for all other ends combined.

Wow! We’ll soon cross Sixteen Trillion Dollars in Federal Debt! S-i-x-t-e-e-n T-r-i-l-l-i-o-n D-o-l-l-a-r-s. That’s a lot of vote buying even for Washington. Is this ruin? Have we indentured our children into servitude? Solomon warned borrowers will be slaves to their lenders. Add $120 plus trillion in unfunded forthcoming liabilities and, well, we’re doomed.

Cost of war/U.S still paying benefits to civil war relatives