[tacticalogic]

Is there an efficiency loss *compared to the wealth we'd otherwise enjoy* from shifting resources from where the market would put them, to where our votes decide to put them? Sure. But it isn't a spending to zero of our existing wealth, it is merely an opportunity cost of additional gains in that wealth, foregone.

The premise seems to be that for every dollar that gets sent to the federal government in taxes for entitlement programs, another American will always get a dollar back. The only loss is the loss of any return that might have been had from investing it. Bureaucratic/administrative overhead, waste and fraud are assumed to be 0.

[JasonC]

Wrong, the assumption is that for every dollar actually spent on a currently unfunded liability, someone reveives that dollar. This is the definition of "spent".