Collegiate Times

The majority of you depend on the federal government to go to school.

Aside from Pell Grants and other freebies, over half of you will graduate Tech owing more than $20,000 to Washington.

Combined, you and your codependent countrymen owe close to $1 trillion in student loans.

With an official unemployment rate of over nine percent, millions of temporarily jobless Americans depend on the government for unemployment checks.

Scores of permanently jobless Americans depend on the government for nearly $1 trillion in annual welfare handouts.

44 million Americans, an all time high, depend on the federal government for food.

That is right: one out of six of you are currently on foods stamps.

The front page of the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service website even boasts that “one out of four” Americans receive nutrition aid.

One out of six of you also depend on the government for health insurance.

Federal and state governments spend almost half a trillion dollars a year on the Medicaid insurance program.

Thanks to ‘Obamacare,’ those on Medicaid will grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years — the program currently serves low income children, pregnant women, elderly and the disabled, but in 2014 every low income American can enroll in Medicaid.

50 million seniors and disabled persons depend on the federal government for health care.

The federal Medicare program spends over $500 billion a year on their hospital and prescription drug costs.

Roughly 50 million Americans depend on the federal government for retirement income.

To meet this dependence the Social Security insurance program spends nearly $700 billion a year.

Over two million Americans depend on the federal government for a job. 

Unproductive federal workers earn on average $125,000 a year, more than double their productive counterparts in the private sector.

When you factor in state and local government workers, 19 million Americans, or 15 percent of the workforce, depend on government for a paycheck.

80 percent of you will depend on local governments to babysit your children. 

Instead of exploring this magnificent planet through homeschooling, or gaining a rich education through homeschool or private school, your children will be crammed into concrete and cinder block buildings for eight hours.

If they are extremely fortunate, over the course of 12 years they will learn the contents of a dozen simple, introduction-level college textbooks.

Most of you depend on the government to keep you safe and secure.  This means that instead of successfully protecting your family and property from those who would do them harm, law enforcement shows up after the fact to mop up the mess.

Or this means that instead of being able to ride out bad times in your own home, you will find yourself sitting in a school or stadium waiting for FEMA to hand you a bottle of water and a loaf of bread.  

Few of you can do anything without the permission of government. 

You need a license or permit to marry a spouse, protest, open a business, drive, work any job more skilled than flipping burgers, own a pet, grow your own food and countless other activities.

For crying out loud, you even need permission to install an extra toilet and granite countertop in the bathroom.

Now is the time of year when you have a few cold beers and gather around to watch bankrupt municipalities blow up tax revenues in the sky. 

While you pledge your allegiance to the flag of a central government that robbed productive Americans to pay for your dependence on the aforementioned programs, do not ask yourself what exactly it is you are celebrating.

Do not read the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence, and do not read the Bill of Rights.

Doing so will make you realize that this generation of Americans is the least independent to date. 

Doing so will ruin the mindless, patriotic fervor of the celebration.  Happy Dependence Day.

A version of this article appeared in the Jul 7 issue of the Collegiate Times.