A government's power source in a voting democracy is an electorate totally dependent on it.

You must have noticed the attempts to move the middle class into this dependent faction by stretching programs originally intended for emergencies or the destitute to cover people who really don't need it.

When a majority of voters are finally in the "tax recipient" category instead of the "tax payer" category, the government's power is pretty much permanent. We are frighteningly close to this point already. The bottom fifty percent of taxpayers pays only three percent of income taxes. And if you factor in dependent people who don't file tax forms, it gets worse.