Government's Role and Growth ... We the People

My, how things change. The size and role of our government, for example.

And our misplaced dependence on elitist politicians being able to take care of us without our having to do so ourselves.

We oldsters do that by giving ourselves entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, ObamaCare and public sector pensions and payrolls that are underfunded and whose obligations will be passed on to future generations, unaffordable as they may be.

We can call this behavior on our part an "unknown known" as we tend to look the other way rather than force the politicians to face the uncomfortable facts of intrusive government and financial unaffordability.

Notable & Quotable is short and to the point:

"From Charles Murray's "American Exceptionalism," published this week by AEI Press:

"The common understanding of the limited role of government that united the Founders, including Hamilton, [is] now held only by a small minority of Americans, who are considered to be on the fringe of American politics. The Founders retain their historic stature, with both liberals and conservatives quoting snippets of their writings and arguing that the Founders would be on their side if they were alive today. But as a matter of historical accuracy, it cannot be argued that the Founders' views of the proper scope of government bear any resemblance to the platforms of either the Democratic or the Republican parties.

The expansion of government can be measured in many ways, from the number of people who work for the government to the number of laws and regulations that have to be obeyed. But perhaps the simplest measure of the movement away from the Founders' conception of limited government is the monetary size of government. Except for wartime, the federal government never spent more than 4 percent of GDP in any of the 140 years from the founding until 1931. As of 2011, the government spent about 25 percent of GDP."

Summary

The welfare state is a reality in America.

It's also a largely unfunded one whose bills will crush the dreams of future generations of Americans.

The American Dream is still real. Let's not turn it into the American Nightmare.

In the final analysis, We the People will make that call, either by our continuing inaction or by assuming responsibility and by taking charge of what's been an "exceptional" and successful experiment in self governance the past couple of centuries.

That's my take.

Thanks. Bob.