The welfare state creeps up on us slowly, in stages: a program here, enjoying broad support; another there, less noticed; small increments everywhere, barely noticed, like corporate tax breaks buried in a dense code. And so it goes, until, before we know it, we find ourselves, as with a free credit card, buried in debt—$28 trillion and growing in America today, not counting unfunded liabilities vastly exceeding that, to say nothing of state and local debt as far as the eye can see. And none of that speaks to regulatory redistribution—compelling or restricting some for the benefit of others—the “off‐budget” branch of the welfare state; or to central banks, whose low or even negative interest rates only spur exploding debt. All of this because we’ve come to think that the purpose of government is to solve our every problem, however personal, mostly with “free stuff”; or, more recently, because we’re obsessed with chasing a vacuous “equity.”
Authors
- Published in
- United States of America
