| HN Mirror

Let's not quibble over the population growth rates of these states which provide welfare to everyone. Instead, let's talk about te tax base which provides this welfare and you'll notice that tax base does not grow nearly as fast and might in fact be shrinking - actual reliable numbers are hard to come by. How many of the newcomers to these states will end up being net providers to the tax base and how many will end up being net consumers? If you provide more benefits, more people will come. If you raise the net tax rates to provide those benefits to a growing number of consumers more net payers will leave. The total population may remain the same or may even grow but a larger fraction of that total population will never become net providers, remaining net consumers. What is the end game here? This is a question which has already been answered in many European countries with similarly structured social benefit systems. There the end game is called 'austerity measures', the reduction of state services to keep the state from getting even deeper in debt.

A cynical take on this situation is that the current crop of politicos in these states launch these ever-increasing benefit systems in the knowledge that this attracts voters from a few segments of the population as well as 'future voters' who will move to these places because they promise to provide them with (more) benefits than their current domiciles. Once the costs of the whole system become too high the system will no longer be tenable but the current crop of politicos will by that time have moved on to greener pastures, probably golf courses in some nice shielded and guarded areas. The 'other party' will end up winning the elections after having been out of power for a long time but this will end up being a Pyrrhic victory since they inherit a state on the verge of financial collapse. OK, they say, "we need to fix this mess and the only way to achieve that is to cut spending because we can not raise taxes above where they've been raised by our predecessors" - in fact this promise was one of the factors which made them win the elections. They do just that, lower benefits, lower some taxes - but not that much because they do need money to pay off all those debts and all the running contracts entered by their predecessors - and they manage to pull the state away from the brink of financial ruin.

At the next election round the party which put in place all those benefit programs portrays the current incumbents as "inhumane penny-pushers who only want to appease the rich" with organised - and paid - protests by all the right groups, long media campaigns about the threat of *-ism and *-phobia, the works. The current incumbents try to defend their record stating that they're just cleaning up the mess left by the previous leadership who are financially irresponsible spendthrifts but that message is not nearly as emotionally appealing as the video clips of poor single mothers who now have less to feed their poor children, about the cancelled school trips because the state no longer had the funds to pay for them.

The elections are won by the party which put in place the programs which nearly bankrupted the state, the new leadership undoes part of what the previous leadership did to save the state from financial ruin and as a result the process is set to repeat in a few years. Enough years at least to make sure they get to retire to greener pastures, probably golf courses in nice shielded and guarded neighbourhoods. They don't have to worry about such silly things as financial responsibility, they know they can get the other side to clean up the mess and they also know they'll be able to use the measures the others need to take to clean up the mess to launch a campaign against them which is nearly sure to regain them the leadership in one or two election cycles.

As the label on the shampoo bottle says: rinse, repeat.