Expanding the permanent dependency class

By Brent Smith

The plan to drastically expand America’s dependency class has been in the works for decades, and to be sure, the left has made progress.

But until now, there has remained a stigma attached to becoming dependent upon the benevolent government for one’s survival. There was still a desire to work for a living – to make your own way and take pride in doing so.

However, the left, with its desire to control all things and thus all people, has done a marvelous job of simply changing the narrative. And as a consequence, it has changed the thinking of many.

Temporary assistance transformed into welfare. But this was inadequate, as the word “welfare” still carried a negative connotation. So rather than help people back into the workforce, they merely changed the name again to “entitlement.”

That took care of things for a time. After all, if you receive an entitlement, you must be entitled to or somehow deserving of that money or service. For to be entitled, simply means that you “have a right or legitimate claim to something.”

And as we’ve discovered over the years, Americans are entitled or a have a right to many things, according to the left: Education is a right, health care is a right, and now it seems we’ve advanced to the final stage of the left’s takeover – a right to a “living wage.”

Yet not even us right-wing wackos could have guessed that the “living wage” doesn’t even mean what we thought it meant even just a year ago. A wage is defined as “money that is paid or received for work or services.” You know, the infamous “Fight for $15” and all.

Thanks to the pandemic, the crisis that didn’t go to waste, the term living wage has been short-lived, supplanted by Andrew Yang’s dream of UBI, the Universal Basic Income.

Yet you may have noticed that government autocrats are not calling it that. Not yet anyway. This is their true intention, but it appears they want to ease us into it. So for now the Democrats are just calling it “stimulus.” Other than infrastructure, it’s the favored term of the Washington set. All leftist programs are “infrastructure” and all handouts are “stimulus.”

And the latest stimulus payment scheme is the “child tax credit.”

Now, if you say, that’s nothing new, you’d be incorrect. For those of us outside Washington, a tax credit, any tax credit, is a credit, or deduction against taxes you’ve already paid. This assumes you’ve paid taxes, and because you have children, you are able to take advantage of the per-child deduction written in the tax code.

This is not that, and it isn’t intended to be.

Thanks not to the pandemic, but governments, many Americans were locked out of their jobs. It’s taken only a year of non-employment to condition a good portion of them not to want return to the workforce. This is music to the control-freak leftists’ ears.

Just this past Monday, as part of the latest “stimulus” package, the Biden administration announced that “families will start seeing monthly payments [beginning] in July.” They’re calling it an “enhanced child tax credit.”

An estimated 39 million families (and it will be a lot more) will begin getting monthly checks for every child in the home, and the younger they are (under the age of 6), the more they’ll receive. And recipients won’t have to lift a finger to receive the checks. No application – no nothing.

Combine these checks with all the other “benefits” they receive and it’s likely that many will not have to return work – ever.

And it gets better, or worse, depending on your point of view.

In order to “Build Back Better,” Nancy Pelosi stated that, “We must make this lifeline permanent. …”

Other radical leftist lawmakers also chimed in, saying, “… these monthly payments cannot simply stop after one year or five years. … We must make this change permanent.”

And there you have it. Call it stimulus, call it UBI, call it what you will – but in just one year, the radical left, it appears, has been able to exponentially expand America’s permanent dependency class.

As evil as this is, it is a stunning achievement of the left, for they know that once they begin handing out free stuff, very few politicians that follow will have the courage to stop it.

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Brent Smith

Brent Smith, aka The Common Constitutionalist, is a constitutional conservative who advocates for first principles – the founders' original intent and enemy of progressives. He is former Navy and a martial arts expert. Smith considers himself just an average Joe with no formal journalism background – but rather than simply complain about the state of our nation, he took to the Internet to battle the left. Check out Brent Smith's blog. Read more of Brent Smith's articles here.


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