Samuel Gregg, Acton’s Director of Research and author of the book “Becoming Europe“, says one of America’s real debt dangers is our increasing sense of entitlement from the government. In today’s Investor’s Business Daily editorial, Gregg states our “insatiable appetites” are getting us into the very deep economic trouble that no one, least of all politicians, seems to want to face:
…Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker famously lamented in 2007: “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.”
It’s tempting to see this as a peculiarly Western European problem. This is after all a continent in which even many nominally center-right governments’ default positions are essentially social democratic: i.e., extensive government intervention is simply considered normal.
But can anyone seriously deny that many American politicians — including some conservatives — play this game? Or that millions of Americans from all backgrounds have developed absurd expectations of what government “owes” them in economic terms?
And I’m not just talking about those who apparently regard any streamlining of social security as tantamount to homicide. I’m also referring to those businesses who think they’re entitled to receive corporate welfare instead of competing in the marketplace.
