The harsh spending cuts introduced by European governments to tackle their crippling debt problems have not only pitched the region into recession — they are also being partly blamed for outbreaks of diseases not normally seen in Europe and a spike in suicides according to the AP.

The report goes on to say that the “worsening health was driven not just by unemployment, but by the lack of a social welfare system to fall back on. People need to have hope that the government will help them through this difficult time”.

I think that it is “nice” to have public assistance programs available for the truly needy.  There is however something inherently wrong with these social programs.  I believe these programs promote government dependency.

A growing dependency of government is what got us into so many of our problems, and what is our own government doing?  They are promoting that very dependency. Instead of raising people up, we are keeping them down. We are creating a generational dependency on social programs.

According to the 2012 Index of Dependence on Government more people than ever before—67.3 million Americans, from college students to retirees to welfare beneficiaries—depend on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid, or other assistance.

Once considered to be the responsibility of individuals, families, neighborhoods, churches, and other civil society institutions, Americans are looking to the government to take care of them.

The ethic of self-reliance joined with a promise to the brotherly care of those in need appears threatened, well nearly absent in today’s society. There was a time, before all of the social programs, when people took care of each other.  If you were having trouble the first thing you did was —anything you could — to get back on your feet.

There was no sitting around waiting for the government to come to the rescue. Your church, or family or friends helped out, and you helped others when they were in need.  We took care of ourselves without a dependency on the government.

Our social programs including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are unsustainable in their current form.

Over the next 25 years, more than 77 million baby boomers will begin collecting Social Security checks, drawing Medicare benefits, and relying on long-term care under Medicaid. There will be no event so financially challenging to these programs over the next two decades than this shift of boomers into retirement.

More than 70% of Federal spending goes to dependency programs.

With so many Americans on or soon to be on the government dole and nearly half of all Americans not paying income taxes, there is no way we can pay for all of this and our spending will spiral out of control (it’s almost there now).  With an increase in recipients and a decrease in the number of workers left paying for these programs, we will soon reach our fiscal tipping point much as other countries have already, and this will put us in a certain domestic debt crisis of our own.

In doing research for this article I have found no evidence that Americans are suffering a rise in medical ailments and suicides.  But we have not quite reached the same crippling financial problems as our friends across the pond.

…but trust me when I tell you, it’s coming.