Prof. Walter E. Williams’ latest essay is about the dramatic increase on American Citizen’s dependency on Government.

William Beach has just written a report for the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation titled “The 2005 Index of Dependency.” Between 1962 and today, American dependence on government has more than doubled and shows little sign of abatement. The growth areas of dependency examined in the report are: welfare and medical care, housing, retirement income, education, and rural and agricultural services. The budgetary impact of dependency threatens perpetual budget deficits and high taxes, but to focus only on the budgetary impact is to trivialize the more devastating aspects of dependency.

You can read the rest here. He leaves us with this quote from Benjamin Franklin – “[T]he best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”