We are a nation of addicts. Now, I am not talking about an addiction to drugs or alcohol or porn or gambling or any of the typical addictions. I’m not talking about people’s addiction of social media or people’s addiction to becoming famous by doing stupid things on social media. I’m not talking about binge watching the latest show on your favorite streaming device. There is an addiction that is common to a majority of Americans. That addiction is to the government, more specifically, their apparent free money.

The history of the United States has really changed since the Civil War. The government had began trying to infiltrate their tentacles into economy and finally succeeded during the height of the railroad tycoons and the meat packing industry. Eventually the government passed regulation that favored the larger corporations and subsidized these industries. The government, specifically President Teddy Roosevelt, encouraged investment bankers like JP Morgan to merge several organizations in certain industries into one large one, like US Steel. Also during the Wilson administration the Federal Reserve Bank (The Fed) was incorporated as the central banking institution of the country.

Then the second Roosevelt entered the Oval Office, FDR. He is the one that laid the groundwork for the entitlement programs. FDR established Social Security retirement program, unemployment benefits, among other programs. Also during this time, and also during the Hoover Administration, the government began their massive spending programs in an attempt to get the country out of the Great Depression, which did not work as they had thought. And ever since that time the centralized Federal government has been dumping money into the economy to stimulate recovery and asked the Fed to manipulate interest rates to stave off inflation.

There is a lot more I could cite but the gist of it is the centralized federal government has got into the habit of handing out money to its citizens and corporations, especially the establishment of the welfare state through the inception of welfare programs and Medicare/Medicaid programs.

As I mentioned earlier, the government ended up bailing out the railroad industry multiple times from the late 19th century until finally taking over in 1921 or so because the whole industry went bankrupt after World War I. And they also have subsidies to different industries to manipulate production and prices. We should recognize there is a problem if Bill Gates becomes the largest owner of farmland in the US.

And then we the one disaster that should be fresh on everyone’s mind, the economic collapse of 2008 when the real estate and mortgage back securities tanked due to artificially inflated prices and rates. During that time the government bailed out multiple institutions because they had over extended their companies with high risk investments. We all should recall the “too big to fail” mantra. Why did these corporations like Bear Stearns take on high risk investments? Because they knew the Fed and government would bail them out. And the government was all too willing to oblige them.

And then during recent Covid fauxdemic, the government handed out “free money” in the form of two $1200 stimulus checks. And in addition they also provided additional unemployment benefit payments above what people were receiving. And they provided stimulus money to companies of all sizes, including companies and universities that really didn’t need it.

How has this made us a nation of addicts? It has made a nation of addicts because we look to the government to bail us out. We look to the government to support us financially when things have turned south. We look to have our debt forgiven we overextended our credit. We expect to be paid money when in between jobs. The government provides low income housing and subsidized income. And once these programs are threatened to be infringed upon there is outrage.

We have become to be dependent on the government to fix our messes. to bail us out when the economy lags or tanks and to subsidize our income when we are down on our luck. What they have created is a country of dependents and addicts. When we clamor for money they obliged. We are like the drug addict kid who keeps going to their parents for more money for drugs, except the government will not cut us off.

The government has positioned itself to where it has always wanted to be since Teddy Roosevelt. It has become a behemoth, the malevolent entity posing as a benevolent god, opening wide its loving arms except we walk into the maw of a Venus flytrap.