Greenfield: The Death of the American Welfare State

The Sultan Knish blog ^ | Friday, October 30, 2015 | Daniel Greenfield

[William Tell]

Georgia Girl 2 said: "When you retire you are entitled to it [Social Security] ."

Yes, you are entitled to it. Just as those who are defrauded by any Ponzi scheme are entitled to get their money back.

The problem with Social Security, as with any Ponzi scheme, is that those who benefitted early in the scheme have already spent all the money.

There is no way our federal government is ever going to pay its recognized national debt of twenty trillion dollars or its unrecognized debt of another 150 trillion in so-called "entitlements".

It's simply not going to happen. The only real question is what will happen instead.

One thing that will happen is more Detroits. There will be more cities and states which simply go broke and don't pay their bills.

The federal government will take some little action to try to avoid this, but it won't amount to much.

While this is happening, the standard of living in the U.S. will spiral downward with little hope of stopping the descent. The increasing productivity of other nations coupled with high taxation here will divert investment and jobs away from the U.S.

Even if the U.S. did everything right ( and that is very unlikely), there would still be a serious adjustment to our standard of living because of increasing productivity abroad. There is no sound economic reason that an educated Indian or Chinese should earn less than an American. Only the failures of their cultures and governments have permitted out standard of living to be as high as its been.

Now, the party is ending. The music will stop and there won't be enough economic chairs for all of us. I see substantial problems ahead.

[BTCM]

So you think a great answer to the SS problem would be to take the vote from disabled veterans who can no longer defend you even though they and their employers paid into the system in many cases for eons.