What is it about Detroit, Italy, or Greece that we do not understand?

Victor Davis Hanson asks...

What does it take to warn Americans about unchecked pension growth, socialized medicine, vast increases in entitlements, higher taxes, and steady expansion of government? In other words, what is it about Detroit, Italy, or Greece that we do not understand?

In the last five years, the Obama administration has raised taxes on the top income rates, implemented Obamacare, added millions to the disability and food stamp roles, grown the size of the federal work force, run up the national debt, and vastly expanded the money supply, along with insuring near zero interest rates. Are there any historical examples where these redistributive efforts have brought long-term tranquility and prosperity?

To put it another way, does anyone ask basic questions about human nature anymore? If one gives more incentives to obtain government support while unemployed, why would not fewer people be working? If the food stamp, unemployment, and disability rolls are markedly up, and if it is almost impossible to verify that recipients are also not working for unreported cash wages (we hear mostly of government efforts to add more to these programs, rather than to audit those already on them), why would one seek a “regular” job that would lose such subsidies and make all one’s income reportable? (We know two basic truths about the IRS in the age of Obama: first, it goes after political opponents in partisan fashion, and second, it gives away billions of dollars in federal income tax rebate credits to those who did not deserve them.)

If you allow illegal immigrants to enjoy full government subsidies, driver’s licenses, in-state tuition discounts, sanctuary cities, participation on juries, and all without fear of deportation, then why (a) would people not flock here illegally from Mexico, and (b) why after arriving would they go through the hassle of seeking citizenship when residency provides almost all the same benefits?

If Obamacare is structured to ensure health insurance in extremis without paying a premium upfront, why would anyone buy it — as opposed to simply purchasing it only after an illness or operation, and paying a small fine? (Do life insurance companies allow us to purchase $1 million policies after open heart surgery, and if not, why not?) And if young people often choose to play the very good odds that they won’t get sick, or at least not terribly sick, and therefore do not need health insurance until after their ordeal, how could a plan be predicated on luring millions of young people (a poorer cohort than either the middle-aged or elderly) to buy something they would not often need in order to pay for others who would pay less for something they would constantly need?

The problem with socialism (cf. Detroit to Athens) is not just that it destroys individual initiative and creates a dispirited and montonous sameness to everything, but that its architects usually find exemption from the ramifications of their own ideology and thereby are more emboldened to implement it.

Unions, pet businesses, and D.C. insiders will all receive waivers or subsidies to excuse them from the full wrath of Obamacare — and, therefore, they foist it on others. The Wall Street Journal’s credo of “comprehensive immigration reform” is predicated on the assumption that none of the opinion writers live either along the border or in areas that have experienced huge influxes of illegal immigrants (e.g., their children are not in the public schools of a Tulare or central Los Angeles. They do not try to ranch in southern Arizona; they do not drive in rural Tulare County. And they are not lower middle-class residents of California trying to pay steep taxes for very little in return).

How did it happen that the United States chose to follow the path of socialism at precisely the time that it was imploding the world over?

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