There are a little more than 110 million Americans working in the private sector. They are responsible for generating all of the economic growth, but before doing that they must use their salaries to pay taxes that support an additional 89 million Americans.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that private-sector workers are being asked to fund a growing number of Americans who are not working. Almost 19 million are out of the work force and receiving benefits from the government, which means more than one in eight adults are drawing government benefits rather than working.

Unlikely to ever return to work are 8.8 million who collect Social Security disability payments. An unknown but significant number of the 4.3 million welfare recipients will also leave the work force.

A large number, 5.6 million, collect unemployment, but many of those people will return to the work force as soon as they can.

Private-sector workers are also taxed to pay for government workers at all levels. While some government workers are necessary, there are now 22.4 million being paid to staff government agencies. Those people all require support from the private sector. While we can argue that government workers pay taxes, those tax payments are just the return of a small amount of the money they receive from workers in the private sector

There are also more than 37 million beneficiaries of Social Security retirement payments and this number will grow. In order to pay the benefits those Americans earned while working, the government will need to find a way to get more Americans under 65 working in the private sector.