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A shift to a social welfare state

I keep blogging about this because it worries me so much. And since I don't know enough, here's Jim Manzi, The Corner outlining what we all expected a wholly Dem bill to be:

Defense represents only about 3% of the spending in the bill (as opposed to 12% of U.S. government spending overall, or about 3% of French overall government spending as a point of comparison) and Public Safety represents only about 1% of spending in the bill (as opposed to about 6% of U.S. government spending overall, or about 2% of French government spending overall). In other words, the net effect of this bill is to shift the distribution of U.S. government spending as a whole away from defense and public safety and toward social programs: for good or ill, to make the U.S. into more of a European-style social welfare state. Because the amount of spending is so huge, this will be a material, not notional, shift. Eventually, we will emerge from this recession/depression/whatever it’s going to be. When that happens, is this really the kind of government we’re going to want?

And this change is unlikely to be temporary.

The road to serfdom.

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