Our Sinking Welfare State
 

Some ominous statistics by Robert Samuleson: Our Sinking Welfare State

Read the whole thing.

Re: Our Sinking Welfare State
 

Interesting figures.

Re: Our Sinking Welfare State
 

That's the one that stood out to me, too.

Re: Our Sinking Welfare State
 

Not many people realize how truly desperate California's fiscal plight is.

Pat Buchanan writes about it: California Nightmares.

The bills eventually come due. There is no free lunch...even for a state as rich and diverse as the Left Coast behemoth.

Re: Our Sinking Welfare State
 

I'm stuck here for 14 years until I can retire . . . start cutting, boys, we aren't voting for more tax increases no matter how often Holy Diver tries to vote :) We'll get there as a country sometime too, and obama seems to be accelerating that process. As Buchanan suggested, diversity is overrated - what we need is not diversity but responsibility - both from government and the individual but we are moving far away from that; now anyone who fails doesn't take responsibility they blame the rich, the big business or the government.

Re: Our Sinking Welfare State
 

Samuelson points out that neither government nor private enterprise can address the problem. Private enterprise has been cutting back benefits whereever it can -- with health insurance, 401K contributions, etc.

We need to remodel our economy in some way. That is what Obama is attempting. If he does not succeed, perhaps the conservatives will have a shot at it.

Re: Our Sinking Welfare State
 

Obama has never met a payroll. As George Will memorably wrote, he hasn't run so much as a Dairy Queen.

His ambitious proposals create uncertainty, which recent scholars are emphasizing as a main contribution to the weakness of FDR's New Deal. Regime Uncertainty in 1937 and 2008 | The Beacon

Your premise that he can "remake" an economy like it's an army to be commanded and controlled is a curious fallacy that's all-too-prevalent among people who don't understand economics very well. The economy, after all, is a collection of free choice we 300+ million Americans make every day dozens of times.

Socialism doesn't take into account those choices by not allowing the pricing system to work naturally. (Prices under socialism are by its very nature meaningless.)

Patters, ever thought of reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism? Or Amity Shlaes's Forgotten Man? The former shows the New Deal's Blue Eagle, totally fascistic. The latter demonstrates conclusively to my mind that the New Deal did not end the Great Depression. (1937 was nearly as bad as 1933.)

Re: Our Sinking Welfare State
 

Employment in 1937 was at pre-depression levels. What sent the nation back into a tailspin was cutting the New Deal back before the changes had taken root.

Lets not forget the nation tried it the conservative way(do nothing Hoover) from the crash in '29 until Roosevelt was sworn in in January of '33. Things happened under Roosevelt, under Hoover we got nothing

Re: Our Sinking Welfare State
 

See Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

Although thousands of economists and business leaders begged Hoover to veto the bill, he signed it.

Like your second sentence, your first is just as inaccurate and has been addressed in many previous threads.

I would suggest you read the two books suggested by State in a previous thread. I've read both and they are excellent.

Re: Our Sinking Welfare State
 

This revisionism is tiresome, and ironic considering that Reagan deficit spent to the tune of $500 billion to get out of Carter's recession. The Repubican policies brought us the Great Depression, and Democratic policies ended it. They still can't live that down. They choose to ignore the inconvenient fact that Truman (D) came after FDR.