The American Spectator

If the intelligentsia agreed the system was going to have to change, a way would be found. But they are protected too, many of them tenured and idle on a thousand university campuses across the land.

The often wealthy leaders of modern-day liberalism can live comfortably in their own cocooned world. They are sustained by the conviction of their own moral superiority because (unlike self-interested businessmen) they want to help other people. So by their lights they are public spirited. The catch is that they want to help others with other people’s money, not their own. Their moral ambition is really a disguised form of vanity. They also believe that if the unproductive are to be saved, the rich must be punished.

Most transfers are to older, less healthy, non-working people. And there are more of them every day. With births now well below replacement levels all over the Western world, and staying that way, the crisis will be unavoidable.

The huge expansion in the approved functions of the state was the overwhelming political development of the 20th century. In recent years the leaders of Western countries have been pretending to pay for their spending spree by running up an unpaid credit card at the national level. It cannot be sustained and will not be, even if our current debt-ceiling deadline passes without repercussions.