Well, it seems that “eventually” is getting close.  Arnold Kling has a list of links showing that all the welfare state social democracies are going to hell in a handbasket, with everyone else in even worse trouble than the US.

Arnold Kling predicts a US debt crisis between 2015 and 2035.  Public sector pensions are unpayable.

The welfare state has made a pile of promises it cannot fulfill, and like a debtor in trouble, has been rapidly escalating the promises.

When the president and the most prestigious academies are out of contact with reality, then the path to advancement is to deny reality.  As the housing debacle illustrates, the elite is incurably insane.  The process is self reinforcing – any contact with reality, or tendency to engage in reality testing, disqualifies you for membership of the  elite.  Only lowly contemptible insignificant people engage in reality testing, and as everyone knows, they are boobs and disgusting racists.

In beauty contests, the contestants are asked to demonstrate allegiance to progressivism, by asking them questions on which America is divided. They must side with the Cathedral, or else they lose.  Similarly in a job interview for any important position.  If an executive doubts the Cathedral, the company is likely to be sued for a “hostile work environment”, so a precondition for employment in any substantial corporation in any important position is sincere zeal for the holy faith of the Cathedral.

The tea party is not actually all that rightwing.  They are right wing in that they support the extreme left status quo ante and oppose the even more extreme left status quo.  They want to turn the clock back to Clinton, not 1950, but to save the day, would have to turn the clock back to 1900.

People planned on social security and medicare being there for them. They see the government blowing all the money on pork barrel spending and dud mortgages for non asian minorities, and they suspect that the welfare state on which they intended to rely is going broke fast.  They want to preserve the quite left wing status quo of the Clinton years.

Hence the progressive parody of the tea party: “get the government out of my medicare”.

Only the most extreme elements of the Tea Party movement leadership (Sharon Angle) actually propose to put social security on a sound footing, propose to make it a forced saving program, where you individually and personally own your social security trust fund, rather than a welfare program.

The welfare problem is a necessary result of the universal franchise.  Singapore, and only Singapore, has a non catastrophic solution to the welfare problem.  They were able to get away with a non catastrophic solution only because of the Singaporean/Confucian attitude that the rulers have the right to rule, provided things are going OK, which rewards long term orientation by politicians.

The stupidity of the voters, and the short term orientation of politicians means that a universal franchise guarantees social, economic, and political collapse once government becomes large enough to drag everything down with it.

The least radical solution that could actually work, could make the welfare state viable,  is to implement Singaporean style welfare, social security and healthcare, and to restrict the franchise enough that such a solution wins majority support from those few entitled to vote – which solution is a lot more radical than anyone in the tea party will advocate.

We can divide the major political programs into three:

1. The ignorant and unthinking, who are the great majority, since there is no point in knowing this stuff or thinking about it.
2. Those who doubt the expansion of the state can go on forever, and fear the end is nigh:  these are the tea partiers, who want to stop the boat right by the edge of the waterfall.
3. Those who believe the state can expand forever, because state expenditures are so much more productive than mere private expenditures: these are the elite, to whom thinking like the state thinks is a badge of status, and who therefore confidently believe that going over the waterfall will be fine because the boat will fly like a bird without any need for external support.

The practical solution, of course, is to back the boat away from the waterfall – a long way back from the waterfall, but it is too fiscally late to do that without blowing off most of the state’s financial obligations, and politically impossible to do that without radically restricting the franchise. A program of recognizing bankruptcy, and throwing most of the population of the voting rolls is unlikely to be very popular.

As Dusk tells us:

look at how much regulation the banking industry came under during the 1990s and 2000s to serve the interests of social justice by giving out more mortgages to poor and Non-Asian Minority home-buyers. Rather than bankers individually growing weary and ultimately withdrawing from their calling, they as collective corporations dove into coerced self-sacrifice headfirst and for years swam around in big bucks. And if somehow the pool’s drain opened up, someone else would keep them afloat – I mean, people aren’t just going to let saints go under for serving the cause of social justice, right?

Researchers, inventors, and artists too resent having to comply with state regulations such as meeting affirmative action targets – e.g., when appealing to the government for grant money, having to detail how some expensive piece of equipment will be used in equal measure by men and women, as well as by whites / Asians and NAMs. Or having to detail how some community arts outreach project will target all demographic groups equally, if a financially strapped arts group wants state funding for it. Nevertheless, as annoyed as they may be, on the whole the members of these professions are not in revolt, do not even give off the smell of stewing in resentment, and don’t suffer from the high burn-out rates that Rand would’ve predicted.

…

What Rand fundamentally miscalculated was the ability of inventors, businessmen, etc. to not just slip out of their regulatory fetters but to then form them into lashes with which to whip their competitors, a phenomenon known as “regulatory capture.”

Anti anti communism, the repudiation of McCarthyism, is the same phenomenon: We now know that McCarthy was correct, but politically inconvenient.

McCarthy named Fred Fisher on television as a hostile communist infiltrator within the American government – as indeed he was.

Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Fred Fisher never denied being a communist. No one has ever said he was not a communist He was a member of the National Lawyers Guild, which we knew then to be a communist front organization, and subsequent intercepts has confirmed to be a communist front organization – therefore, a hostile infiltrator, sabotaging the US government from within.

The reason communist infiltration was tolerated and encouraged was that the Cathedral perceived itself to be using the Soviet Union, rather than being used by the Soviet Union.

Similarly, the Cathedral likes to import Muslims precisely because of their anti western attitudes.

To say that it was outrageous to criticize Fisher,was to say it was outrageous to worry about hostile people
exercising power in sensitive positions within the US government.

On the evidence revealed in the Venona intercepts, there is compelling evidence that the Lawyers Guild was a communist front organization.

The evidence presented by the House Unamerican activities committee also seem to me to be quite convincing, but someone might reasonably disagree – the evidence could plausibly be interpreted as evidence of anti anti communism, rather than evidence of communism, plus evidence that the benevolent and helpful soviet union
was benevolently assisting the benevolent and helpful Lawyer’s guild to engage in helpful benevolence.

And that is precisely why anti communism came to be demonized – because the Lawyer’s guild, with the direct and substantial support and assistance of the Soviet Union, was in fact assisting the Cathedral in its war against ordinary Americans, and was not directly assisting the Soviet Union in its efforts to conquer the world – so the Cathedral quite reasonably and realistically perceived themselves as using Stalin, rather than being used by Stalin.

The Lawyer’s guild were doing what the Cathedral perceived as good – at the instigation and with the assistance of Stalin and the Soviet Union, and were not obviously doing anything the Cathedral might perceive as bad, like arranging for the Soviet army to shoot Cathedral members and bury them.

Thus the Cathedral could plausibly view the Lawyer’s guild as the Cathedral infiltrating and manipulating the communists, rather than the communists infiltrating and manipulating the Cathedral.

The activities of the Lawyer’s guild are evidence that the Cathedral was soft on communism and allowed themselves to be infiltrated. It is also evidence that the Cathedral strategy of being nice and doing favors was working, that infiltration was a two way street.

Remember when Khrushchev said “we will bury you” they immediately proceeded to reinterpret him as proposing a
relatively peaceful takeover that leaves the existing cathedral in place as Soviet apparatchicks, rather than shipping them off the gulag – revealing what they really wanted and hoped for.

They hoped for and expected the kind of Soviet takeover that was the implied backstory of those “Startrek the Next Generation” episodes created before the fall of the Soviet Union – though I am pretty sure the Soviet Union had a very different kind of takeover in mind, intended to deal with the Cathedral with hot lead and shovels, rather than giving Cathedral members cushy jobs as Soviet Apparatchiks.

The Cathedral realistically believed that communists could and would promote their ideal of a greater, more powerful, and more benevolent state, just as they realistically believe that Muslim voters will vote for more government. They were unrealistic in believing that the Russians shared progressivism or could be persuaded to share it.

They realistically hope to use the enemies of America against their American enemies, and unrealistically hope to convert the enemies of America to progressivism.

It is even less realistic to suppose that Muslims will be converted to progressivism, but observe the strident response of progressives when we ridicule this delusion:  “Raaaaacist!”

The Cathedral sets a very high value on being reasonable and nice and civilized. I recall that when a warmist scientist addressed skeptical scientists, he urged them that if they took a more conciliatory position they would have “more influence” I don’t remember his exact words, and they matter little because the message was primarily in the way his body language commented upon his words, the unspoken but gestured message being “accept a lot of warmist beliefs, and warmists will accept a little of skeptic beliefs, and we will see to it that you get grants.”

And thus, contrary to what was predicted in “Atlas Shrugs”, scientists have come on board with the Cathedral and abandoned science, rather than retreating to Galt’s Gulch.

A similar tendency towards shear niceness was evident in the financial collapse. It was quite unthinkable that financiers who has pissed away billions of their clients money in nice behavior, should thereby become unemployed, or even have their wealth and power seriously diminished, or even have their control over other people’s money diminished, or be asked to make any substantial changes in the way they managed other people’s money. And so the bankers are not heading off to Galt’s Gulch either.

The Cathedral, though quick to accuse its American enemies of being extreme, uncompromising, and violent, is paralytically incapable of dealing with enemies that actually are extreme, uncompromising, and violent. It likes to ally with them against its American enemies, but even absent that inclination and strategy, is just generally incompetent and incapable at dealing with them, so in desperation ascribes its own niceness and willingness to compromise, to them.

Its tendency to compromise, to distribute power in tiny little bite sized chunks, means that stuff just does not get done – as for example, the fact that the buildings damaged and destroyed in 9/11 are still damaged and destroyed nine years later.

To repair or replace any of these buildings, needs a hundred approvals from a hundred Brahmins, which no normal American businessman is ever going receive for anything (hence our European levels of unemployment).  Islamists, however, can achieve it, because of their ability and willingness to apply negative incentives to roadblock bureaucrats. Being nice to each of one hundred Brahmins, good members of the establishment, unfortunately precludes being nice to one businessmen. When, however, the businessman is a dangerously non nice Muslim, such obstacles can be readily overcome.

The Cathedral approach to coalition building means it has no ready answer to those that spit upon its coalition and murder its members, other to welcome them inside, as it welcomed Ward Churchill inside.

Anti anti communism was not necessarily crazy, since they perceived themselves to be using Stalin to make war on evil Americans, even though Stalin thought he was using them, but the mortgage disaster, which is still under way, was definitely crazy, dismantling technological civilization to avoid possible slight warming is seriously crazy, and the Muslim takeover of Europe is really seriously crazy.

Intefluidity reports that Treasury is not willing to deal with this problem.
Interfluidity tells us:

I believe these policymakers conflate, in full sincerity, incumbent financial institutions with “the system”, “the economy”, and “ordinary Americans”.

…

Ultimately, this “minimalist” approach to managing the GSEs amounts to nothing more or less than keeping the existing system and proposing that it be better regulated, including specific regulatory suggestions that are foreseeably unlikely to withstand industry pressure. No offense to its very smart proponent, but this was a non-idea dressed up as reform.

…

Large, complex, leveraged and interconnected financial firms simply cannot be regulated, by the private or public sector. Without regulation they quite rationally maximize stakeholder wealth in a manner that happens to be socially and economically destructive. The only way around this is to change the incentives of all stakeholders, and that could only happen by placing them in a different kind of firm. We have to limit the size and composition of firms’ creditor base, so we can be sure losses to creditors would be socially and politically tolerable. (We do this already, or try to, with hedge funds.)

But the Cathedral is not much affected by contact with reality.  Dylan Matthews took a survey of  the elite, to ask them where the Laffer curve maxed, and all of them that were among our masters answered 69% or 70%, or refused to answer. Such a high value is improbable, but what is really improbable is such perfect agreement on such an uncertain number. You cannot get perfect agreement on anything unless it is official Cathedral doctrine. And if a high Laffer maximum is Cathedral doctrine, then actions that would be insane unless you believe in a high Laffer maximum are the Cathedral program

The recent substantial increases in the cost of employing people have not been reflected in substantial reductions in people’s wages, thus wages are substantially above market clearing levels.  The Fed could, I suppose, inflate their way out of this problem, using inflation to sneak the real value of wages down, thus causing employment to recover.  Government could then point out that the bloated capitalists are increasing their oppression of the victimized proletarians, and use that as justification to make employing people even more expensive.  Never let a good crisis go to waste.

“The beach will fix itself”

“More oil spilled every year in Africa, in Nigeria, than so far in the Gulf, so it’s not unique. It’s not exceptional. It’s not the largest. Mexico had a spill that larger than this, nobody talks about except apparently me”

And behold:  The beach has fixed itself.

The reason that BP was drilling there in the first place is that giant oil plumes occur naturally from time to time in that location– not as big as this one, but comparable. There is an entire ancient oil eating ecology naturally present in the gulf

This supposed crisis is akin to the supposedly horrifying crisis of the radioactive boy scout – any man made radiation is deemed ten gazillion times worse than naturally occurring sources of radiation, and any man released oil is deemed ten gazillion times worse than naturally occurring sources of oil.

Just as the soil is full of living creatures things that turn dead leaves into compost, the Gulf of Mexico is full of living creatures that turn oil into asphalt. The asphalt sinks to the bottom, and eventually gets buried in mud. It appears that sea creatures ate most of the released oil, and cleanup crews collected only a tiny portion. No doubt it was rough on those sea creatures that cannot eat oil, which all the cute charismatic creatures from seagulls to crabs cannot, but nature is rough whether humans meddle or not.

And while the cute charismatic creatures had a hard time for a while, now the oil is gone.

There are several possible explanations of this

1. People tend to give politically correct replies to polls, rather than what they genuinely believe.
2. Republican party activists do what Palin tells them to do, and republican party voters do what republican party activists tell them to do.
3. A nobody cannot beat a somebody. Get Palin’s endorsement, you are no longer a nobody, you are a serious candidate, the one to beat.

I suspect all of these explanations are true.

While the economic value of anything depends on sellers and buyers agreeing on that value as civil equals in the absence of force, modern government is about nothing if not tampering with civil equality. By endowing some in society with power to force others to sell cheaper than they would, and forcing others yet to buy at higher prices — even to buy in the first place — modern government makes valuable some things that are not, and devalues others that are. Thus if you are not among the favored guests at the table where officials make detailed lists of who is to receive what at whose expense, you are on the menu.

The revolving door:

This is an administration that almost employs more Goldman Sachs officials in financial and regulatory positions than Goldman Sachs itself does.  One of the first acts of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was to hire a BP executive to serve as a deputy administrator for land and minerals management.  And now they’ve just hired to implement the new healthcare law someone who was just recently in charge of the lobbying and government activities of the nation’s largest private insurer.

If someone genuinely opposed big business, he would opposed all government regulation and all taxes.

Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters – speaking the “in” language – serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats.

It is in the nature of government to grow, and so it swallows up everything. The parasite eventually destroys the host. Government has seized upon a multitude of justifications, the most recent justification being the welfare state, the coming justification being saving the earth. Insolvency approaches. Trees do not grow to the sky. That which cannot continue, will stop.

The left is astroturf, it is the voice of the state. But we have already reached the point where persuading people to vote for more government, or interpreting their vote as a vote for more government no matter how they vote has become ineffectual, depriving the left of any reason for existence, depriving democracy itself of the reason for its existence.

Supposedly GDP is growing, and growing fast – despite the fact that everyone is feeling poorer, and private sector jobs are declining.  An amazing productivity increase, largely reflecting amazing productivity improvements by government and quasi governmental employees.

So let us look for a different measure:  Taxable retail sales.  Which are stagnant or down.  Population keeps growing, but they are buying less stuff, in part because they are being taxed more.