George Will's recent column "Mugging Our Descendants" is quite sobering. What are the consequences of piling up the public debt? His column is baased on the work of Nicholoas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. Some of the statistics he gives are:
1. Between 1960 and 2010, entitlements exploded from 28 percent to 66 percent of federal spending. By 2010, more than 34 percent of households were receiving means-tested benefits.
2. “he growth of entitlement spending over the past half-century has been distinctly greater under Republican administrations than Democratic ones.
3. Today, 27 percent of adult men do not consider themselves part of the workforce: “A large part of the jobs problem for American men today is not wanting one.” Which is why “labor force participation ratios for men in the prime of life are lower in America than in Europe.”
4. In 1960, an average of 455,000 workers were receiving disability payments; in 2011, 8.6 million. Nearly half of the 8.6 million were “disabled” because of “mood disorders” or ailments of the “musculoskeletal system and the connective tissue.” It is, says Eberstadt, essentially impossible to disprove a person’s claim to be suffering from sad feelings or back pain.
5. “In 1960,” Eberstadt says, “roughly 134 Americans were engaged in gainful employment for every officially disabled worker; by December 2010 there were just over 16.”
6. For every 100 industrial workers in December 2010, there were 73 “workers” receiving disability payments.
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