Doomed liberalism?

John Hinderaker offers up this insight on where we are now.  It's hard to refute this position on this subject.

IS LIBERALISM DOOMED?

Liberals are feeling triumphant these days, but in the backs of their minds there must be a sense of foreboding. They won this year by demonizing Republicans and by bribing various demographic groups with government largesse. But the Left’s tactical victory can’t conceal the fact that its ideology is bankrupt. The left’s real enemy isn’t Republicans, it is arithmetic.

Welfare states are collapsing all around the world. Ours is on the same course. It is commonly observed that America’s entitlement programs are Ponzi schemes, which is correct. What is less often noted is that federal government spending in general is a Ponzi scheme, sustained only by influxes of new money–real money from China and a handful of others, and fake money from the Fed–that cannot long continue.

It is characteristic of any Ponzi fraud that the people who get in on the ground floor do well. That makes the scheme popular; people clamor to get in. This is what has happened with Social Security and Medicare here in the U.S. Past and current beneficiaries are receiving benefits that are entirely disproportionate to what they paid in. This obviously cannot continue indefinitely. Every Ponzi fraud inevitably crashes when its exponential growth cannot be sustained because there is not enough new money–not enough suckers, to put it bluntly. In the context of entitlements, “new money” means young people. That point is now approaching rather rapidly.

This is why the Democrats cannot adopt a budget. A budget requires arithmetic, and arithmetic demonstrates that the welfare state must either come crashing down, or be exposed as the terrible deal it is for those who didn’t get in on the ground floor.