An Interlude of Random Comments on the Constitutional Crisis

1. Interlude is another word for stalling. My only daughter is past the due date on his first kid, plus there’s lots of other breaking news in Mount Berry, GA. So a combination of transient ADD and lack of time is delaying indefinitely the next big installment.

2. I’ve been visited by a very smart local TEA PARTY guy. His people really do think the welfare state is unconstitutional. Even Medicare and Social Security, I respond?! He says there weren’t any health care “issues” until we had them. Families should step in as government recedes. You have to admire his integrity, which is more manly and principled that either Randian or your typical economist’s libertarianism. But it remains the case that you can’t build a majority coalition around such manliness.

3. Neither families nor family values are what they once were. For one thing, we have a lot more old people, and a lot a fewer young ones. And the single fastest growing demographic group is men over 65 with neither spouse or children close to him. According to John Locke, the only reliable tie of obedience the old folks will have on his kids in a free society is money—especially the uncertain prospect of inheritance. It may be case, now more than ever, that if you’re going to get old you’d better be rich, and we are entering an era when it’s going to be harder than ever to figure out how to make your money last as long as you do.

4. Paul Rahe (drawing on the pioneering work of Allan Carlson) reminded us at BYU that a social scientist who actually knew stuff—Gunnar Myrdal—predicted that the welfare state would lead to a birth dearth. If government’s going to take care of you in your old age, why do you need kids (or even, for that matter, savings)? The Truman Administration (a vigorous promoter of the welfare state) saw some merit in this prediction, which is why the tax code came to include a high deduction per kid. It was high enough, Paul told us, that his relatively prosperous father of three kids paid no income tax in 1950. He was doing his duty to the state, the thought was, by producing those who’ll produce what’s required to sustain the welfare state. Others—the non-breeders—have to do their duty by paying money. That high deduction never increased, was eroded by inflation, and became by, say, the 1970s relatively insignificant. The mismanagement of the welfare state caused the two great (economic) incentives to reproduce to wither away.

5. It my view it’s really reaching to claim that the welfare state is the main cause of our demographic crisis. For one thing, nobody really thinks that Social Security and Medicare really, by themselves, make the lives of our old folks secure. Their lives stink without savings and loved ones, and the truth is the need for kids to live well in old age hasn’t dropped off that much in our far-less-than-cradle-to-grave welfare state. Plus: More and more people are planning with great success to get very old, and high-tech “capitalism” far more than “social democracy” is the cause of their unprecedented success. Remember: Our demographic crisis is less not enough kids than too many very old people.

There’s more, but I gotta go . . .