5 thoughts on “The Death Spiral”

  1. The welfare state doesn’t need to (and probably won’t) die. It just needs to (and shall, either by election or bankruptcy) cut back on the welfare offered, and make the welfare dynamic to some key variables (life expectancy, means testing, etc.).

    In fact France shows up how the welfare state will continue to be involved in world affairs for a long time to come. France noticed that their demographic position didn’t look good, with below-replacement birth levels. They then offered welfare statism to parents, in order to entice them to have kids. And it worked. France now has the best growth rate among native populations of any large European country. Only Iceland is growing faster.

  2. Their identities as Germans, Italians and Spaniards would gradually blend into a continental identity.

    If they’d just bothered to get the point of the story about the tower of Babel they’d realize that without a common language it would never happen.

  3. the basic rate for the value added tax will rise from 21 percent to 23 percent

    If you’re thinking that’s a 2% increase think again. That’s 2% to the power of how many times in the supply chain it’s charged. Well 1.02 to the power.

    Just what we need here, eh?

  4. the basic rate for the value added tax will rise from 21 percent to 23 percent

    If you’re thinking that’s a 2% increase think again.

    That’s actually a 9.5% increase (23/21). Sure, the VAT rate is increasing by 2 percentage points but that represents a 9.5% increase in the rate. Downplaying the percentage increase is a favorite game the statists play.

  5. ‘The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money’ [Darleen Click]

    So said Margaret Thatcher.

    Bit sticky for Obama, Pelosi, Reed, etc who’ve been pushing hard for a massive socialization of America. Especialy given the other dark factoid of social welfare states is they are highly unproductive. Until the latest crash, the best year of EU growth since its founding, was worse then the the worst year of US growth in the same period.

    Kinda hard to build your socialist utopia while your going broke in general.

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