[PEN-L:1789] Response to Doug He

["Peter.Dorman" <23215MGR@xxxxxxx>]

Thanks to Sid for his interesting post on deficit mania and the decimation of
the Canadian welfare state.  As a rhetorical point, has anyone noticed the
absurdity of claims that countries like the US, Canada, the EU states, etc.
"can't afford" the level of social spending inherited from the past?  Somehow,
a social wage that was affordable twenty years ago, before twenty years of
slow but positive per capita economic growth, is now beyond our reach.  Even
the demographic argument (older society) doesn't have the oomph to overcome
the gap between rhetoric and reality.  How have they been able to sell this
load of bull?  (See the coverage of the French strike in the New York Times
for a typical example.)

Peter Dorman