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RUSH: Terry Jeffrey at Cybercast News Service. I remember talking about this 20 years ago, 25 years ago, the welfare, Social Security, the number. When I started this program, if my memory is right, in 1988, 1990, it took the taxes of four or five people to provide the benefits for one Social Security or retiree recipient. Meaning that if a retiree gets 30 grand a year, just to pick a number out of the blue, that the taxes from four people would pay for it.

So you were spreading the burden of providing for that one retiree over four people. Which I think was outrageous then but it was considered good. Oh, okay, that’s a small price to pay to protect our beloved seasoned citizens and pay for their existence after they’ve retired or when they’re on Social Security. But then the demographics were changing, the Baby Boomers were getting older, living longer, retiring at the same age, and the projection was that it wouldn’t be long — about now — that it would require the taxes of two workers to provide benefits for a Social Security recipient or somebody that’s retired living off federal donations or contributions or what have you.

So whereas that burden used to be spread across four people, it would be spread across two, and that would therefore cost those two people a lot more than it did 25 years ago. Well, now it looks like we’re getting close to this, because here’s the headline from Terry Jeffrey’s piece: “Eighty-six Million Full-Time Private Sector Workers Sustain 148 Million Benefit Takers — Buried deep on the website of the US Census Bureau is a number every American citizen, and especially those entrusted with public office, should know. It is 86,429,000.

“That is the number of Americans who in 2012 got up every morning and went to work — in the private sector — and did it week after week after week. These are the people who built America, and these are the people who can sustain it as a free country. The liberal media have not made them famous like the polar bear,” but they are truly the people who make this country work, the 86 million people that are working. There are 92, 93 million people who aren’t working, but there are 148 million that are simply taking.


So you’ve got 86 million private sector workers, back bone of America, sustaining 148 million benefit takers. Now, not all of the 148 million are unemployed. Some of them work part-time or what have you, but that’s the number of people getting some sort of federal benefit. And, of course, for anybody to get a federal benefit, somebody working has to be taxed, is the point.

Now, this is a number that cannot be sustained for very long and the direction we’re going it can’t be sustained, because eventually 86 million is gonna become 80 and then 75, and at some point they’re gonna throw their hands up and they’re gonna refuse. Their tax rates are gonna get so high, the money taken from them will mount up to so much in order to pay for the 160 million down the road benefit takers, they’re just gonna refuse to pay the tax rate. That’s where this kind of thing is headed, and it’s been going in this direction.

You hear politicians talk about “kicking the can down the road.” They don’t want to deal with this now. Leave it for the next Congress. Leave it for the next administration. This is why there’s a Tea Party. At some point we’re not gonna be able to kick it down the road. At some point it’s gonna have to be dealt with, and that is when America stops looking like America. That’s when it looks like the Great Depression. That’s when it looks like deterioration all over the place, and we’re headed in that direction, as that number indicates.

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RUSH: Yeah, that’s right. The takers outnumber the workers. It’s official — and it’s significant — the takers outnumber the workers. That can’t keep on this way for very long. I mean, not tomorrow. But particularly these Millennials right now are fed up with no jobs. They’ve got their college degree, and where’s the big house? Where’s the Ferrari? They did what everybody said; they went to college.

That was the route to everything.

So they go to college, they come out, and they got nothing. Can’t find a job. Can’t find a career. When they find out that whatever job they do get, their taxes are going to support people that are not working? Well, we’ll just see. Remember, they’re already fed up with the government. They’re upset that they’re being spied on by the NSA.

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RUSH: Jackie in Canton, Ohio, I want to get to you before we have to get out of here today. Hi.

CALLER: Hi. I’m so glad that I got through and able to talk to you today.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I wanted to get your opinion of what you think about the Millennials maybe possibly not waking up ’til it’s too late. You know, like our grandparents. I don’t think they ever really thought that the Depression would happen. I was wondering if you think that something like that is gonna be what it takes to wake these people up.

RUSH: Yeah, I know what you mean. I have been asking that question, Jackie, about people in general, not just the Millennials. I’ve been asking that question for 25 years: When are people gonna wake up to X? When are people gonna wake up to Clinton? When are people gonna wake up to Hillary? When are people gonna wake up to Obama?

When are people gonna wake up to these people? Well, here we are in the midst of absolute disaster, and they don’t seem to be waking up to it. So I don’t know. I keep thinking that we’ve bottomed out at some point and we’ve got to start the rebound, and yet that hasn’t happened yet, either. Just keep plugging away is all you can do, and at some point it will happen. Of that, I am totally confident.

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