From time immemorial—from Etienne de la Boitie to David Hume to Ludwig von Mises—political analysts have noted that because the number of those in the ruling elite amounts to only a small fraction of the number in the ruled masses, every regime lives or dies in accordance with “public opinion.” Unless the mass of the people, no matter how objectively abused and plundered they may appear to be, believe that the existing rulers are legitimate, the masses will not tolerate the regime’s continuation in power. Nor need they tolerate it, because they greatly outnumber the rulers, and hence whenever they become subjectively fed up, they have the power—which is to say, the overwhelming advantage of superior numbers—to oust the regime. Even if the regime possesses a great advantage of coercive power, its employment avails the rulers nothing if they must kill or imprison 90 percent of the population, because such massive violence would reduce them to the status of parasites without hosts.

This consideration long seemed to make sense as a critical element of political analysis, and even today one often encounters it. Something akin to it seems to motivate the current Occupy Wall Street movement and its spin-offs in other venues when they represent themselves as members of the (exploited) 99 percent, in opposition to the (exploiting) 1 percent.

Certain long-established trends in the welfare state, however, have progressively weakened the force of this analysis. The main element of these trends is the tremendous growth in the number of people (and in their proportion in the population) who are directly dependent on government benefits to a substantial degree. Researchers at the Heritage Foundation have been tracking this development for several years and have pushed their analysis back for several decades. An index of dependency based on this research increases from 19 in fiscal year 1962 to 272 in fiscal year 2009.

The Heritage index uses information on almost three dozen important federal programs on which Americans depend for cash income and other support—including housing assistance, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance benefits, educational benefits, and farm-income supports—but it is scarcely a comprehensive measure, inasmuch as the total number of federal programs with dependents is gigantic at present. Of course, each such program has government employees and contractors who run it and hence depend on it to earn much, if not all, of their income. Government civilian and military retirees add millions more to the ranks.

The Heritage researchers found that in 1962, 21.7 million persons depended on the programs they included in their index for benefits. By 2009, the corresponding number of dependents had grown to 64.3 million. Adding dependents not included in the Heritage study might easily increase the number to more than 100 million, or to more than a third of the entire population. Thus, the parasites verge ever closer to outnumbering their hosts.

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Last month I introduced you to the It’s Working educational effort. The clip below is our second 60-second television commercial that is airing across the state of Wisconsin. Together with the Americans for Prosperity Foundation – Wisconsin, the MacIver Institute has crafted this educational effort in an attempt to rise above the heated rhetoric and engage in an informed, fact-based debate.

As you can see on the ItsWorkingWisconsin website, the results of the recent labor and budget reforms in Wisconsin are quite impressive. We had heard some say the sky would fall, that there would be massive layoffs of state and local government workers and teachers. Some asserted that Wisconsin’s budget reform would mark the end of the state as we know it. But the sky’s still there, and Wisconsin is stronger than ever, thanks to Wisconsin’s budget reform. (more…)

From the Associated Press:

Wisconsin was the first battleground. But it is unlikely to be the last.

A similar proposal to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights drew throngs of protesters Thursday at the Ohio Capitol. Hundreds more have demonstrated in Tennessee and Indiana, where Republican-led committees have advanced bills to restrict bargaining rights for teachers’ unions. And governors from Nevada to Florida have been touting the need to weaken union powers and extract more money from government employees to help balance out-of-whack budgets.

The confrontation comes as organized labor is reeling from a steady loss of members in the private sector. The public sector, with about 7.6 million members, now account for the majority of workers on union rolls, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Among union leaders, a sense of crisis is growing.

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General strikes in Greece have brought much of the country to a halt as trade unions and government workers stage more protests over austerity measures.  A 24-hour work stoppage  last week closed much of the country’s public sector and shut down  ferries, trains and public transport.

So here  is one unfunded social utopia’s score card so far:  Three have died already this month in massive riots  in the streets of Athens which are in danger of re-erupting anew.  Paralyzing strikes from civil servants, so used to getting so much largess for doing so little for so long.   A  $145 billion bailout is in jeopardy with the big dogs of the EU, Germany chief among them, expressing serious concerns that the austerity measures demanded of Greece as a condition to merit the loans will ever come to fruition.  Given the revised deficit projections and a public that seems unwilling to admit that their free ride brand of socialism as expressed in a financially unsustainable pension structure is collapsing, who can blame Europe?

Greece is bankrupt.   Their debt is 108% of GDP and will climb to almost 150% by 2013 when the bailout loans would come due.  25% of Greek taxes will go to service its debt — to mostly foreign investors.  Currently that nation’s government spending amounts to 50% of its GDP.

Consider then that in 2009 US debt was 86% of GDP and climbing.  It will go past 100% by 2012.  20% of U.S. federal taxes go to service the interest on the national debt.  That number too will rise.  Our major social entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, are bankrupt.  We are waging foreign wars almost entirely on our own—so that Europe doesn’t have to.  And now we have just enacted the mother of all entitlements in Obamacare  that only the most wishful of thinkers (or a cynical Democratic Congress and White House) would argue is anything but a multi-trillion dollar debt dog pile on top of an already strained budget.

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From the Associated Press:

Deadly riots over harsh new austerity measures engulfed the streets of Athens on Wednesday, killing three bank workers as angry protesters tried to storm parliament, hurled Molotov cocktails at police and torched buildings.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets as part of nationwide strikes to protest new taxes and government spending cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund and other European nations before heavily indebted Greece gets a euro110 billion ($141 billion) bailout package of loans to keep it from defaulting.

The three bank workers—a man and two women—died after demonstrators set their bank on fire along the main demonstration route in central Athens. As their colleagues sobbed in the street, five other bank workers were rescued from the balcony of the burning building.

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Study this USA Today chart and cry:

According to USA Today:

“Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.”

And let’s just add insult to injury:

“These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.”

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