welfare – The Knight Shift

Jobs are evaporating. Manufacturing is disappearing from our shores. Millions upon millions of undocumented immigrants are flooding across our borders.

And now, at long last, the population of Americans on government food assistance outnumbers that of private sector employees.

This is not sustainable.

From the story at CNS News…

The number of Americans receiving subsidized food assistance from the
federal government has risen to 101 million, representing roughly a
third of the U.S. population.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates
that a total of 101,000,000 people currently participate in at least
one of the 15 food programs offered by the agency, at a cost of $114
billion in fiscal year 2012.

That means the number of Americans receiving food assistance has
surpassed the number of full-time private sector workers in the U.S.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 97,180,000 full-time private sector workers in 2012.

...

I have had an idea, which may or may not address a myriad of problems affecting these United States…

We should begin letting all natural-born Americans be citizens. But only at age
18 can they become full citizens, with all the rights and privileges that comes with such citizenship.

However, for that to happen a person must be made to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that he or she is up to handling the responsibilities that comes with being a fully-functioning member of a democratically-elected republic.

Each individual would have to demonstrate
basic knowledge of the Constitution, some simple geography (i.e. be able
to find the United States in a world map) and basic English. Perhaps along with some understanding of American history, economics and accounting. Let the examinations be done in the randomly-applied style of the SAT, the GRE and similar tests. It shouldn’t be too hard but neither ...