mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black"">When Responsibility Doesn’t Pay

font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:#333333">Welfare always breeds contempt. By MARK STEYN

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

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mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;letter-spacing:-1.2pt"">W"Times New Roman";color:black"">hile Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand-new, even-more-unsustainable entitlement at the health-care
“summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising
cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen —
because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little
further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to
plunge over the falls. America is farther upstream and can still pull for
shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with the
Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads
eventually to Chapter Twenty (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at
Chapter Seventeen or Eighteen.

What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand:
The 20th-century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it
to. In America, the feckless, insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento,
Albany, and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe,
they’ve reached the next stage in social-democratic evolution: There are no
kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of
around 2.1 — or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of
about 1.3: Ten grandparents have six kids have four grandkids — ie, the family
tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 “lowest-low” fertility — the point
from which no society has ever recovered. And, compared to Spain and Italy,
Greece has the least worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe.

So you can’t borrow against the future because, in the most basic sense, you
don’t have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58, which sounds great.
But, when ten grandparents have four grandchildren, who pays for you to spend
the last third of your adult life loafing around?

By the way, you don’t have to go to Greece to experience Greek-style
retirement: The Athenian “public service” of California has been metaphorically
face down in the ouzo for a generation. Still, America as a whole is not yet
Greece. A couple of years ago, when I wrote my bookmso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black""> "Times New Roman";color:black"">America Alone, I
put the then–Social Security debate in a bit of perspective: On 2005 figures,
projected public-pensions liabilities were expected to rise by 2040 to about
6.8 percent of GDP. In Greece, the figure was 25 percent: in other words, head
for the hills, Armageddon outta here, The End. Since then, the situation has worsened
in both countries. And really the comparison is academic: Whereas America still
has a choice, Greece isn’t going to have a 2040 — not without a massive shot of
Reality Juice.

Is that likely to happen? At such moments, I like to modify Gerald Ford. When
seeking to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences, President Ford liked
to say: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough
to take away everything you have.” Which is true enough. 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. That’s the point Greece is
at. Its socialist government has been forced into supporting a package of
austerity measures. The Greek people’s response is: Nuts to that. Public-sector
workers have succeeded in redefining time itself: Every year, they receive 14
monthly payments. You do the math. And for about seven months’ work: For many
of them, the work day ends at 2:30 p.m. And, when they retire, they get 14
monthly pension payments. In other words: Economic reality is not my problem. I
want my benefits. And, if it bankrupts the entire state a generation from now,
who cares as long as they keep the checks coming until I croak?


We hard-hearted small-government guys are often damned as selfish types who
care nothing for the general welfare. But, as the Greek protests make plain,
nothing makes an individual more selfish than the socially equitable
communitarianism of big government: Once a chap’s enjoying the fruits of
government health care, government-paid vacation, government-funded early
retirement, and all the rest, he couldn’t give a hoot about the general
societal interest; he’s got his, and to hell with everyone else. People’s sense
of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense.

The perfect spokesman for the entitlement mentality is the deputy prime
minister of Greece. The European Union has concluded that the Greek
government’s austerity measures are insufficient and, as a condition of
bailout, has demanded something more robust. Greece is no longer a sovereign
state: It’s General Motors, and the EU is Washington, and the Greek electorate
is happy to play the part of the UAW — everything’s on the table except anything
that would actually make a difference. In practice, because Spain, Portugal,
Italy, and Ireland are also on the brink of the abyss, a “European” bailout
will be paid for by Germany. So the aforementioned Greek deputy prime minister,
Theodoros Pangalos, has denounced the conditions of the EU deal on the grounds
that the Germans stole all the bullion from the Bank of Greece during the
Second World War. Welfare always breeds contempt, in nations as much as
inner-city housing projects: How dare you tell us how to live! Just give us
your money and push off.

Unfortunately, Germany is no longer an economic powerhouse. As Angela Merkel
pointed out a year ago, for Germany, an Obama-sized stimulus was out of the
question simply because its foreign creditors know there are not enough young
Germans around ever to repay it. Over 30 percent of German women are childless;
among German university graduates, it’s over 40 percent. And for the
ever-dwindling band of young Germans who make it out of the maternity ward,
there’s precious little reason to stick around. Why be the last handsome blond
lederhosen-clad Aryan lad working the late shift at the beer garden in order to
prop up singlehandedly entire retirement homes? And that’s before the EU
decides to add the Greeks to your burdens. Germans, who retire at 67, are now
expected to sustain the unsustainable 14 monthly payments per year of Greeks
who retire at 58.

Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt
bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an
ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less
profligate, still-just-about-functioning corners of America such as my own
state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn’t pay. You’ll wind up bailing out
anyway. The problem is there are never enough of “the rich” to fund the
entitlement state, because in the end it disincentivizes everything from wealth
creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the
fertility rate. In Greece, they’ve run out Greeks, so they’ll stick it to the
Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to
afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the
Americans. And in America, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are saying we need to paddle
faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?

"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:#666666"">— Mark Steyn,
a font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-variant:small-caps;color:#666666">National Reviewmso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:#666666""> columnist, is
author of 11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:#666666">America Alone. © 2010 Mark Steyn"Times New Roman";color:black"">