“We’re rich, aren’t we?”

TV reporter John Stossel recently did a “man on the street” interview of mostly young people (early 20s) in Times Square, New York. He asked people what their ideal political candidate would do. Without exception, the answers all involved receiving “free” benefits such as health care, retirement pensions, domestic partner benefits, on and on. Stossel asked one young woman, “You want the government to provide ALL of this?” She replied, “Sure. We’re rich, aren’t we?”

If this is the dominant point-of-view, then this is what the end of civilization looks like. Not one of these people grasps what should be two obvious points: One, money does not grow on trees–it has to come from somewhere; two, “the government” takes money from those who have earned it. The government does not create wealth on its own. The people who answered the question this way seem unaware of, and unconcerned about, these facts. In the process, they violate both economic sanity and basic morality.

More and more, I encounter people whose grown children are moving back home with them. I noticed this trend before the onset of the current “Great Recession.” Twenty years back, you’d only hear of middle-class children moving back home for reasons of illness, divorce or perhaps substance abuse. Those reasons still exist, but many more are moving back home simply because they have no way of functioning in the world. Their parents complain that these young people act as if they’re entitled to be taken care of, or at the very least should be taken care of because it’s too much work to go out and create the income their parents generated in past decades. I can’t help but wonder if there’s a connection between the young people who say, “Well, government should take care of that — and they will, not to worry,” and the young people with essentially the same attitude regarding their parents.

The government is bankrupt, but these young people don’t seem to care. The federal Treasury can only print so much paper currency without the whole system blowing up at some point. (As one example, read about the Weimar Republic of Germany, which preceded Hitler back in the 1920s). We cannot indefinitely raise government spending and deficits in an economy that is shrinking. The private sector is essentially stagnant, and may even start to decline, on its current course. But these people continue to insist, “We’re rich, we can afford it.” They assume that everyone else’s wealth belongs to them and that everyone else is responsible for them, particularly if they’re successful. The fact that there’s less and less success taking place doesn’t bother them.

There’s talk America is becoming a European welfare state, where government insurance is generous, taxes are high, wealth is in short supply and unemployment is the norm. But those European welfare states count on a successful America to prop them up with innovation, technology and all the other things that capitalism has provided. What happens when America becomes one of them — and when there is no giant of capitalism left in the world? If things don’t change radically, drastically and fast, America may go down in history as the first — and last — great rich country on earth.