The 60 Second Update

with Dr. Paul Rahe

4. What should we learn from the European countries that have become "welfare states?"

Social insurance – what we call “social security” – is corrupting. It destroys the family. Before there was social insurance, Europeans looked to their children for support in old age. That expectation was one of the reasons that they had children. Human beings are creatures of habit, and habits change slowly. In time, the existence of social insurance had an effect, and Europeans started having smaller and smaller families. In practice, this has in turn eroded the foundations for the welfare state – for there were fewer and fewer young people working, and this meant that there were fewer and fewer young people to pay into the social insurance trust funds from which the retired drew their social insurance payments. There is no country in Europe that has a birthrate sufficient to provide for the replacement of the existing population. The welfare state in Europe is on the verge of collapse, and the same may soon be true in the United States.

Question 5. What are the most important lessons we can learn from
Rousseau, Tocqueville, & Montesquieu?