Further thoughts on the liberal rich

I should have separated out immigration amnesty as a sixth policy. Unchecked immigration helps keep wages down for the lower classes, thus further impeding their ability to rise on the economic scale.

Also, the decoupling of work and welfare and the expanded provision of “benefits” such as unemployment insurance and food stamps help to diminish motivation at the bottom. That makes seven.

Finally (for now), the inattention to the national debt—remember, Obama admitted on the Letterman show that he doesn’t even know what the national debt is—and, a fortiori, the failure to deal with the fiscal gap will further diminish prospects for all those not already rich.

The “fiscal gap” is the difference between the present value of the expected cost of future government obligations—pensions, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, &c. Lawrence Kotlikoff of Boston University estimates that the Federal fiscal gap is $222,000,000,000,000, or about $707,000 per capita. Add to that the state gaps (nearly all states have ridiculously underfunded pensions), and you can easily get to three hundred trillion dollars, which is nearly one million dollars for every man, woman, child, and illegal alien in the United States.