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Socialism is about selfishness for one generation. The children be damned! The reason Europe is NOT reproducing its too expensive to have children to work to pay for it. Its work out so well Europe is dying out because of the perverse incentives generated by the modern welfare state. Even if we could afford it, the last thing we should do is leave our children stuck with the tab of our own selfishness. Yet its precisely the argument Republican politicians are afraid to make: we must think of the welfare of future generations to come.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

Socialism is about selfishness for one generation.

IOW, Socialism is short-term thinking. Social Security is about the grandparents (like me, only without the conservatism); conservatism is about the grandchildren - even, the great grandchildren.
The Social Security Trust Fund contains government debt.
Government debt is an asset to anyone who owns it, but it is a liability to the government no matter who has it. As long as the government holds its own debt, that debt is meaningless. You can write an IOU for any amount you choose, and as long as you keep it it has no effect. But if ever you sell it to someone else, it becomes a liability to you.
Just so, the "safe" government bonds in the SSTF are meaningless in the governments hands - and engines of inflation if the government ever sells them to fund retiree benefits. There would in that case be no difference between selling those bonds, and just printing the money. Those bonds are useless for their putative purpose of helping our grandchildren fund our retirement without inflation.
What can fund your retirement without tending to produce inflation? Only paper backed by real assets - mortgage loans, corporate stocks, and so forth. Government debt is useless for that purpose. Conservatism is about bequeathing a legacy to the future; the opposite of conservatism is eating the seed corn now, and starving later.

The reason Europe is NOT reproducing its too expensive to have children to work to pay for it. Its work out so well Europe is dying out because of the perverse incentives generated by the modern welfare state.

The most profound conclusion in Steyn's book is what socialism -- and welfare programs -- do to society.

They destroy it.

If you want to insure the doom of a civilization, make everything "free"...