I’m finally getting around to catching up on my reading now that I’m finally finished with law school, and I came across yet another outstanding Victor Davis Hanson article–which I wanted to pass your direction
One of the strangest things about the current California meltdown is how no one in state government here ever pauses to ask simple questions like: Why do we have the largest annual deficit with one of the highest sales tax and income tax rates in the country?
Anyone who charted the annual state budget increases over the last 10 years and adjusted for population and inflation rises would conclude that the state has decided to take over all sorts of previously private responsibilities and to ensure state employees and various dependents a level of compensation that is not sustainable.
I think Hanson really nails “it” to the wall here… and, in doing so, communicates a fundamental concervative concept: sustainability.
For you see, it is not un-conservative to care about people and want them to have the best health care, benefits, or jobs… but we want all those things to happen within the framework of sustainability. Massive programs are simply NOT sustainable; medicare, medicade, social security… EACH one of these programs is scheduled to become insolvent within our lifetime… and will leave us all broke and miserable when they eventually collapse under the weight of their own obligations.
I don’t know if its ironic or scary… but when a brave politician does suggest reforming these unsustainable programs… he is mocked and attacked by the left who, apparently, has no concept what the term unsustainability means..
via More California Dreaming- The Corner on National Review Online