An interesting read about the growth of the welfare state and the entitlement attitude. I would only add that the entitlement attitude is not limited to Leftwing Democrats and recipients of government assistance of one sort or another. Conservatives also seem to suffer from their own sense of entitlement in regards to freedom, liberty, justice, etc. An entitlement is something you have a right to without any effort on your part. Conservatives seem to believe they have the right to liberty, but that they don’t have to do anything to defend it, promote, or rise up and fight for it. The only thing conservatives seem will to do is complain and sit back and wait for some magical liberty fairy to come along and sprinkle them with magical liberty pixie dust. Good luck with that.
read me: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444914904577619671931313542
This seems to be happening in most countries of the Western World (even though it should be taken into account that most Western nations were nowhere near as entrepreneurial and self-reliant/independent minded as Americans were in the old days) , ironically, the Scandinavians are the ones going in other other direction by scaling-back the welfare state (except Norway, since they still have the oil money to finance it) and cutting taxes.
This is interesting: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
“After 2019, interest income and redemption of trust fund asset reserves from the General Fund of the Treasury will provide the resources needed to offset Social Security’s annual deficits until 2034, when the reserves will be depleted.”
The way things are going now, Social Security and Medicare will go the way of the Dodo bird by the middle of the century.
I doubt it will last that long. This all presumes nothing goes wrong. Any interruption of the status quo and the whole house of cards comes down.
Well, maybe we will then finally see the end of the entitlement culture that is destroying Western civilization (and even some non-Western countries) and a return to the long forgotten virtue called personal responsibility.