Obama’s Couch Potatoes

Source: Wall Street Journal

“Government's telling them ‘stop dreaming, stop striving, we'll take care of you.’ We're turning into a paternalistic entitlement society. That will not just bankrupt us financially, it will bankrupt us morally. We'll have a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check.”

--Chris Christie, New Jersey governor

We have decried how the national elite—Democrats—no longer agitate for jobs as in Franklin Roosevelt’s time, but agitate instead for “fairness” (“pie recutting”). And we have “viewed with alarm” the shocking discovery that the federal government sends money to 30% of the population.

Still, it comes as a surprise—at a time when women make up 47% of those employed; the workforce long ago made room for 1950s-style (Ozzie and) Harriet stay-at-home moms—to find that only 55% of Americans over 16 work full-time (above chart, adjusted for part-time work [LNS12032194]).

30% of the population on the federal government dole. 45% of the population not working, or working part-time. 50% of the population paying no federal income tax. Many wish they could work, but there are presumably a number of “couch potatoes” who love Obama’s big government—while it lasts.

As Christie suggests, the morally right thing to do is get off the couch and go to work—at a job a healthy private sector creates.