As I  was trying to come up with something to write about on today’s blog, I recalled reading the other day that 76% percent of Americans were living from paycheck to paycheck.

I thought to myself, how can that be possible? We live in the richest country on God’s green Earth. We have been the leader of the free world and the country most admired by the world’s population for quite some time now.

How did all this come about?

I believe it is a mixture of events, both internally and externally, that has caused the economic plight that we now find ourselves in.

Starting all the way back with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and all of the government programs which he began with the express purpose of bringing us out of the Great Depression, Americans have grown more and more dependent on a nanny state government.

This blind trust was cemented by JFK’s hopeful optimism and national push for Americans to commit to serving their country.

By the time President Johnson came into office, after the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the majority of Americans totally believed that our government always had our best interest at heart.

President Johnson came into office and immediately started his push for the Great Society. These programs were designed to make Americans even more dependent on the Federal Government for their very survival.

As the Vietnam War grew more and more and unpopular, Americans’ trust in the government became more and more compromised.  Protests against the Federal Government became more and more common and it became cool to be a rebel or “hippie”.

Time passed, and while rebellious Americans calmed down, Americans’ dependence upon government programs became generational, as multiple family members from one generation to the next, relied on Uncle Sugar for their daily existence.

Meanwhile, the rebels of the 1960’s got older and began to work within the system, taking jobs within the private and public sectors.

Eventually, they moved into positions of power, becoming heads of corporations and local and national politicians.

It is not really necessary to tell you what the political ideology of these rebels was, is it?

As the last century ended and the new one began, these hippies and their offspring, solidly in place in the halls of power, began to pass more more legislation designed to keep generations of Americans enslaved to Uncle Sugar.

Ironic, huh?

And, then it happened.

From the state of Illinois, came the messiah that both the hippies in power and the dependent class they made careers out of enslaving had been waiting for, Barack Hussein Obama.

With both a liberal controlled Congress and a Far Left president, a pathway was cleared for an all-out assault against capitalism.

Immediately upon his ascension to power,  Obama set out, with the help of his minions, to pass an massive Stimulus Bill , which was designed to reward their supporters, while buying and paying for some new ones.

Meanwhile, corporations continued their trend of leaving the country, begun with the rise of the Liberal Congress, due to high taxes and the anti-capitalist policies of the ruling class.

Even after a strong showing by Conservatives in 2010, the ruling class made sure that their new messiah would remain on the throne for a second term, by manipulating the shallow minded Republican Establishment into nominating an ambivalent legacy as their Presidential Candidate.

Preying on the government dependency of 47 percent of Americans, the Liberal Democrats secured a second term For Barack Hussein Obama.

And, that brings us to our current situation.

We are a nation badly in need of another Gipper to help us reach the goal line.

On January 20, 1981, newly-elected President Ronald Wilson Reagan said these words to a weary nation…

These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions.

We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people.

Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery, and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.

But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we’re not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding: We are going to begin to act, beginning today.

The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we’ve had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

We hear much of special interest groups. Well, our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we’re sick — professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truckdrivers. They are, in short, “We the people,” this breed called Americans.

Well, this administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination. Putting America back to work means putting all Americans back to work. Ending inflation means freeing all Americans from the terror of runaway living costs. All must share in the productive work of this “new beginning,” and all must share in the bounty of a revived economy. With the idealism and fair play which are the core of our system and our strength, we can have a strong and prosperous America, at peace with itself and the world.

So, as we begin, let us take inventory. We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.

Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

President Reagan understood that

Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.

And, for Americans to prosper, capitalism must not be stifled by over-taxation and an unfriendly Federal Government.

When the private section prospers, the power of the Government to control our daily lives diminishes.

So…why are 76 percent of American living paycheck to paycheck?

Because our national politicians have to protect their phony-boloney jobs…and, it is easier to control us this way.

Until He Comes,

KJ