History suggests the era of entitlements is nearly over
The 70-plus years since 1941 have seen a vast increase in the welfare safety net and governance by cooperation among big units — big government, big business, big labor — that began in the New Deal and gained steam in and after World War II. I immodestly offer my own “Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan.”
The original arrangements in each 76-year period became unworkable and unraveled toward its end. Eighteenth-century Americans rejected the Colonial status quo and launched a revolution, then established a constitutional republic.
Nineteenth-century Americans went to war over expansion of slavery. Early-20th-century Americans grappled with the collapse of the private-sector economy in the Depression of the 1930s.
We are seeing something like this again today. The welfare state arrangements that once seemed solid are on the path to unsustainability.
Blowback
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It won’t be pretty, but he has a semi-optomistic point.
rob verdi on January 13, 2013 at 2:03 PM
Well it just might mean we need MORE taxes on the filthy rich, a tax on the middle class, a vat tax, taking the 401K-ira to see to it that bho, aka santa clause, gets more and more into the entitlements program?
L
letget on January 13, 2013 at 2:08 PM
I could care less whether the era is over, that was fated to happen as sure as the sun rises. Tell me what’s AFTER the era of entitlements. Because that’s what I’m going to have to spend the majority of my adult life in.
MelonCollie on January 13, 2013 at 2:15 PM
God damn the Looters, foremost. The Moochers are just plankton and sheeple.
Schadenfreude on January 13, 2013 at 2:16 PM
How did that end for Rome again? Something about barbarian invaders? I know! Let’s call it “amnesty.”
RoadRunner on January 13, 2013 at 2:24 PM
I followed a link to that article from Instapundit a few minutes ago, and thought it was eye-glazingly dumb. The Americans are at or near the end of an era in “entitlements,” but not because they’ve gone around the sun some number of times.
Marsili.us on January 13, 2013 at 2:55 PM
The entitlement state was always doomed. You can’t have a majority taking from a shrinking base of producers. You can’t keep deficit spending so that the pain of paying for it isn’t felt by the recipients. .
wildcat72 on January 13, 2013 at 3:29 PM
The left knows full well that they cannot sustain the welfare state.
Which is why they’re going full bore for a fascist one party state by destroying the GOP, amnesty, and disarming us.
Then they won’t have to gain power by giving out free stuff, they’ll have the good old fashioned “pistol shot to the back of the neck, shallow mass graves” that worked so well for the progressives in the past.
Rebar on January 13, 2013 at 3:54 PM
After entitlements comes slavery. The State is duty bound to give you a house well, this concrete box is what you get and if you do no like it you have to work for the state to get a better house. The State is duty bound to give you healthcare so you have to stand in lie for 3 weeks to see a “doctor” for 2 minutes. It is all the state can provide to be cost effective. The “doctor” may or may not know anything he was assigned by the state to be a doctor to pay for a pillow in his state issued house.
tjexcite on January 13, 2013 at 3:59 PM
Not just history but fundamental economics provide evidence that the “era of entitlements is over.”
onlineanalyst on January 13, 2013 at 4:12 PM
provides the evidence
onlineanalyst on January 13, 2013 at 4:14 PM
At this point its not a question of “if” but “when”.
tommyboy on January 13, 2013 at 4:30 PM