Entitlement creep isn't a law of nature - it's a leftist strategy. The original big error was not means-testing Social Security.
Steyn makes the case that ideas like expanding SCHIP to the middle class is the worst thing we can do "for the children."
One quote:
I’m in favor of tax credits for child health care, and Health Savings Accounts for adults, and any other reform that emphasizes the citizen’s responsibility to himself and his dependents. But middle-class entitlement creep would be wrong even if was affordable, even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover it every month: it turns free-born citizens into enervated wards of the Nanny State. As Gerald Ford likes to say when trying to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.” But there’s an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give you everything you want isn’t big enough to get you to give any of it back. As I point out in my book, nothing makes a citizen more selfish than socially equitable communitarianism: Once a fellow’s enjoying the fruits of Euro-style entitlements, he couldn’t give a hoot about the general societal interest; he’s got his, and who cares if it’s going to bankrupt the state a generation hence?
That’s the real “war on children”: in Europe, it’s killing their future. Don’t make the same mistake here.
More from the Steyn editorial at Flopping
