How we are like France before the revolution:

“The number of persons having monetary dealings with it, subscribing to its loans, living on wages paid by it, and speculating in government-sponsored enterprises [!] had enormously increased.  Never before had the interests and fortunes of private individuals been so closely bound up with those of the State.  Thus the mismanagement of the State finances, which formerly had affected only the administration, now brought ruin to many homes.”

Alexis de Tocqueville said it in his The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Trans. Stuart Gilbert) (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, [1858] 1955), p. 179.

Cafe Hayek has it.