The Entitlement State Nobody Mentioned

Richard Ebeling emails:

Dear Bob,

I have a new article out on “The Entitlement State Nobody Mentioned.”

 The Republican and Democrat Party conventions are over and, noticeably, one crucial government policy issue not faced by any of the speakers is the crisis of the American “entitlement” state.

The recently released Congressional Budget Office’s long-term budgetary projection covering 2016 to 2046 makes it clear that the major redistributive programs – Social Security and government health care spending of various types – are pushing the federal government’s deficit spending back to the $1 trillion-a-year range very soon, with the national debt reaching stratospheric heights.

But Democrats merely wish to push harder on the government-spending accelerator, and the Republicans have no principled or pragmatic intention of challenging the rationale or pervasiveness of the welfare state.

 All of this stands in stark contrast and opposition to the guiding ideas and ideals upon which the American experiment in self-government was originally built. Instead, cloaked in the mysticism of democratic will of “the people,” America has been heading back to the ancient notions of collectivist obligation and sacrifice to which the individual must conform.

 Lost in “progressive” rhetoric and rewriting of history is the truly revolutionary and radical world that the individualist creed of liberty and peaceful, voluntary association and exchange help make for humanity reborn in the pursuit of freedom and prosperity rather than tyranny and poverty.

 There is needed a political-philosophical transformation in America and other parts of the world to defeat the continuing descent into a loss of personal freedom, economic stagnation, and the growing burden of governmental fiscal chaos.

http://www.epjresearchroom.com/2016/07/the-entitlement-state-that-nobody.html

 Best,

Richard