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[stocks]

You can see trajectory of the welfare state's descent into pure power politics by retelling its story:

In the 1930s FDR carefully packaged Social Security as an "earned" benefit: you put your money into the "trust fund" and you take it out when you need it.

In the 1960s LBJ passed Medicare with only a partial attempt to fund it with proper actuarial probity. So Medicare will eat up its "trust fund" before Social Security.

But in the Medicare Part D expansion, the Republican president and Congress merely passed a new spending entitlement (and also some Republican friendly health spending accounts). No trust funds, no taxes.


So the ship of state is on course for the rocks. Inflation, default, haircuts, and riots in the streets.

The problem with the entitlement state is that politics is purely a predatory activity. You sign up for loot in exchange for your vote. The administrative state is not a community, it is a patronage state with hungry clients clamoring for their next handout.

Nobody in America, not one person, is going to agree to cuts in their entitlements until the day after the government runs out of money and the rioters have left the nation in ruins.


http://roadtothemidd...titlements.html