Charles Hugh Smith: The Domination of Government and the Decline of Self-Reliance and Community

From of two minds:

While the causal connections between the decline of community and TV, the Internet, two-earner households, suburban sprawl and long commutes, etc., are visible in a common-sense fashion, they miss the primary unspoken causal factor: the growing domination of the Central "Savior" State in every aspect of the economy and society.

From an anthropological or natural-selection point of view--i.e. one informed by sociobiology-- community and marriage alike are at root highly advantageous survival techniques: a group has far more resources than a similar number of isolated individuals, and offspring are more likely to survive and prosper if two parents are devoting resources to their upbringing rather than only one adult is carrying that burden.

In nations dominated by Savior States, there is less reason to invest in community or self-reliance, because the government handles everything.

We are constantly reassured that "there is plenty of money" for all the Savior State's vast (and ever-expanding) obligations, yet simple grade-school math calls all these happy assumptions into question. Even if we taxed the top 1% at a rate of 70%, that wouldn't be enough to fund the $100 trillion+ future obligations of Medicare, which rises inexorably by 6% a year even as the underlying economy grows at best at a rate of 2%.

Right now, as the 65 million-strong baby Boom generation has barely begun to retire, the nation is running a monumental deficit of $1.6 trillion (more if off-balance sheet borrowing is included), fully 12% of the nation's entire GDP. As I have documented here, Social Security is running deficits in 2011 that weren't supposed to occur until 2018.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay11/govt-community-decline5-11.html