http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0416/p01s04-usec.html?page=4

52.5% of Americans ... wait I'll just quote from the article and hopefully that will be enough for you to read this piece:

Slightly over half of all Americans – 52.6 percent – now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, N.J. That's up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within ten years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President's Reagan's move to scale back the size of government.

Ha... :(