No End to Spending

I thought this quote did a good job of summing up the problem we will be having in the next fifty years:



“The problems of democracy are inherent. It’s like having dinner with a million people and deciding up front the bill will be split evenly. Everyone has a strong incentive to order more than he would individually, resulting in a huge bill that everyone deplores but no individual could do anything about. Democracy therefore has a very limited self-cleansing capability. Our politicians have a natural short-term outlook since they are only temporarily in office. They will overspend, overtax and over borrow knowing their successors will have to deal with the negative consequences. Besides that, they spend other people’s money anyhow.”

Everyone  has a lot of motivation to fight for whatever money is going in their direction. No one is taking the role of cutting off programs which are a waste of government money seriously.