The Real War On Children

Mark Steyn points out that the Democrats are using "for the children" as a sort of twisted version of Tourette's syndrome. It is peppered throughout almost any discussion popping up, for the children, at odd intervals, for the children, in any statement the make. For the children. The problem here is that the emotional blackmail of "for the children" is actually conducting a real war on children: the young ones of today and the yet to be born ones who will have to pick up the tab for the entitlements enacted "for the children."

One assumes he means some illegal Republican Party "war on children." Last Thursday, Nancy Pelosi, as is the fashion, used the phrase "the children" like some twitchy verbal tic, a kind of Democrat Tourette's syndrome: "This is a discussion about America's children … We could establish ourselves as the children's Congress … Come forward on behalf of the children … I tried to do that when I was sworn in as speaker surrounded by children. It was a spontaneous moment, but it was one that was clear in its message: we are gaveling this House to order on behalf of the children."

Etc. So what is the best thing America could do "for the children"? Well, it could try not to make the same mistake as most of the rest of the Western world and avoid bequeathing the next generation a system of unsustainable entitlements that turns the entire nation into a giant Ponzi scheme. Most of us understand, for example, that Social Security needs to be "fixed" – or we'll have to raise taxes, or the retirement age, or cut benefits, etc. But, just to get the entitlements debate in perspective, projected public pensions liabilities in the United States are expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8 percent of our gross domestic product. In Greece, the equivalent figure is 25 percent – that's not a matter of raising taxes or tweaking retirement age; that's total societal collapse.

So what? shrug the voters. Not my problem. I paid my taxes, I want my benefits.

In France, President Sarkozy is proposing a very modest step – that those who retire before the age of 65 should not receive free health care – and the French are up in arms about it. He's being angrily denounced by 53-year-old retirees, a demographic hitherto unknown to functioning societies. You spend your first 25 years being educated, you work for two or three decades, and then you spend a third of a century living off a lavish pension, with the state picking up every health care expense. No society can make that math add up.

And so, in a democratic system today's electors vote to keep the government gravy coming and leave it to tomorrow for "the children" to worry about. That's the real "war on children" – and every time you add a new entitlement to the budget you make it less and less likely they'll win it.

That is the real danger of the "for the children" mantra. It really is "sticking it to the children." The lavish larding of government "gravy" for all makes people into serfs – wholly dependent on the largess of the government. It takes away personal responsibility for one's actions and replaces it with the all-knowing, beneficent nanny state. Only the beneficence soon enough disappears as the bills come due. The taxes go up, the benefits decline, the system collapses. The children are left holding the bag.

So, think hard here. Are the Democrats acting "for the children" or against them?

UPDATE: Others: Mondoreb, Fausta, Bookworm Room,  BitsBlog, Sister Toldjah, Betsy's Page,

categories Politics, Taxes | Gaius October 21, 2007

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