What does it mean when an Establishment mouthpiece like the Christian Science Monitor runs an article like this?

Republicans’ capture of both Congress and the White House was, understandably, a demoralizing blow to the left. But the latter can take solace that “Republican” is no longer synonymous with spending restraint, free markets, and other ideals of the political right.

While the left did not get its way on tax cuts, this may be only a temporary defeat: Freewheeling spending has made future tax cuts politically a lot harder.

During the first five years of President Bush’s presidency, nondefense discretionary spending (i.e., spending decided on an annual basis) rose 27.9 percent, far more than the 1.9 percent growth during President Clinton’s first five years, according to the libertarian Reason Foundation. And according to Citizens Against Government Waste, the number of congressional “pork barrel” projects under Republican leadership during fiscal 2005 was 13,997, more than 10 times that of 1994.

Certain trends have been favoring the left for the past several decades. In the early 1960s, transfer payments (entitlements and welfare) constituted less than a third of the federal government’s budget. Now they constitute almost 60 percent of the budget, or about $1.4 trillion per year. Measured according to this, the US government’s main function now is redistribution: taking money from one segment of the population and giving it to another segment. In a few decades, transfer payments are expected to make up more than 75 percent of federal government spending.

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It’s like I’ve always said, redistributionist systems never voluntarily reform themselves; reform always comes as a nasty wake-up call. One point the article brought out was that

We are on track to become more like the welfare states of Europe and Canada, where entitlement spending leaves limited funds available for bold foreign policy initiatives.

They make it sound so benign, like we’ll just drift off to socialist entitlement la-la land and end up like those limp-wristed weenies in Europe. But if this trend continues, at some point the Dollar will cease to be the world’s reserve currency– and deservedly so. These types of currency displacement events are usually accompanied by tumultuous “the emperor is naked” moments that trigger a crisis of confidence, the eventual killer of all fiat currencies.

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