Violent protests by public employees in Greece who are upset that they might have to give up their 13th and 14th months salary is the ultimate sign of dependency. The private sector behaved slightly better but still opposed the changes (“We want the government to take back these measures which freeze our pay rises and force us to stay longer in the workforce,” said Maria Grigoropoulou, a cosmetics store employee. )
These guys seem unable to conceive that they could take care of themselves for a change and not just receive money from the government in exchange for nothing. And yet the Greek austerity plan isn’t that austere ( some wage cuts for public workers, a three-year freeze on pensions and a second increase this year in sales taxes and the price of fuel, alcohol and tobacco,) especially compared to the self-imposed austerity plans in Lithuania and Latvia.
With that in mind, let’s look at what’s happening in the United States. Obviously, we are not Greeks. Yet, the level of dependency is growing in America. Check out this chart.
On this chart we can see the changes over time in the composition of personal income in the United States since 1929. The most notable trend is the increase in the portion of personal income coming from government transfers (mainly social Security payments, unemployment benefits, food stamps, and personal and business tax credits.) And the increase isn’t minor: the proportion of total personal income constituted by government money has grown from 0.9% to 17.2%.
While we may agree that safety nets are okay during hard times, this is not what’s going on here. Government transfers increased even during good times. It means that more people are getting more of their income from government transfers.
Complementary decreases of wage earnings as percentages of total personal income (from 59.5% to 52.3%) are also going on. This is not good news.
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