Cloward, Meet Piven: The Coming Collapse of the Welfare State

Can Washington turn America into one giant bankrupt Detroit? Yes it can, writes Daniel Greenfield in the latest essay at his Sultan Knish blog:

Increasing welfare is only a form of Death Panel economic triage that doesn’t compensate for the lack
of productive workers. It’s easy to model Obamerica as Detroit, a country with a huge indigent welfare population and a small wealthy tax base. The model doesn’t work in Detroit and it’s flailing in New York, California and every city and state where it’s been tried.

After a century of misery, the left still hasn’t learned that there is no substitute for the middle class. It’s not just running out of money, it’s running out of people.

The welfare state is bankrupt and doesn’t know it yet. Reality hasn’t caught up with the numbers. Instead the welfare state is floating on loans based on past productivity, old infrastructure and a diminishing productive population whose technological industries employ fewer people and don’t require their physical presence in the United States.

The welfare state has no future. It is only a question of what terms it will implode on and what will happen to the social welfare political infrastructure when it does. The violence in Venezuela and the slow death of Detroit give us insights into the coming collapse of the welfare state.

Read the whole thing.

Related: “When Our Government Commits Fraud,” from Richard Epstein of the Hoover Institute, on the duplicity of of the executive branch “in its dealings with Fannie and Freddie’s private shareholders.”

Harry Reid (D-NV) is dealing with the coming collapse of the welfare state in his own special way — by going Full Koch Derangement Syndrome.

And Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is ready to go full speed down the road to Cloward-Piven perdition: “There is absolutely no way we’re going to cut spending.”