Keep people fed, housed, clothed, entertained and give them access to health care and they won’t complain about not having work. Has our government known for a decade or more that our source of freedom, our ability to earn money by working, was going to disappear?

The recession wiped out millions of jobs, about 8 million according to a 2010 report on money.cnn.com. Along with a loss of livelihood, those unemployed workers likely also lost their health insurance. Did our government leaders see this crisis coming? Does it explain the reason President Obama pushed so hard to pass the health care law, to the exclusion of any other legislation? Why didn’t he work to improve the economy, rather than spending his first two years in office on Obamacare?

The timing is certainly an interesting coincidence. As people lose their income, their health insurance, their disposable income, they find the government now stepping in to provide: 99 weeks of unemployment, government-mandated health insurance, “Obama phones,” mortgage loan modifications and an increasing push to enroll people into the food stamp program.

I begin to suspect that not just Obama, but other top-level government officials, have known for years that the economy was changing in a way that would shed those old reliable jobs that provided for a lifetime of income, a pension and health insurance. In order to keep us pacified, to keep us from rioting in the streets, our leaders are devising plans (Obamacare is merely one) that will take care of our needs so we don’t challenge our government. The push to bring more people into the food stamp program fits with this theory as well. Two parts of the support structure are already there: food and health care. Now I wonder what they are cooking up in the way of providing housing, clothing and entertainment. The housing component could fit into the Agenda 21 plan to mandate low-cost housing in all jurisdictions across the U.S.