{"id":2469,"date":"2009-12-04T12:57:01","date_gmt":"2009-12-04T17:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=2469"},"modified":"2009-12-04T14:01:37","modified_gmt":"2009-12-04T19:01:37","slug":"when-butter-guns-a-nation-toast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/2469\/when-butter-guns-a-nation-toast\/","title":{"rendered":"When Butter > Guns, a Nation = Toast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704107104574573711965511326.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> offers some penetrating analysis<\/a> on the inevitably inverse relationship between government financing of \u201cguns\u201d and \u201cbutter.\u201d\u00a0 When tax receipts dwindle, appropriators often choose between funding social welfare programs (butter) and national defense (guns).\u00a0 Unsurprisingly, the European welfare state provides a cautionary example.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The overlooked culprit here is the rise of the modern welfare state. Since World War II and especially from the 1960s, Europe has built elaborate domestic income-maintenance programs, with government-run health care, pensions and jobless benefits. These are hugely expensive, requiring high taxes and government spending that is a huge proportion of GDP.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Europeans\u2019 obsession with income stabilization through higher taxes means there is less economic growth and less money to spend.\u00a0 These continental priorities mirror the massive increases in social spending enacted or proposed under President Obama \u2013 economic stimulus, health care \u201creform,\u201d cap-and-trade and job creation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As\u00a0the U.S. federal deficit balloons, politicians and bureaucrats will look for ways to balance the books.\u00a0 And given the current Administration\u2019s and Congress\u2019\u00a0 love affair with \u201cbutter,\u201d unfortunately, they\u2019ll likely look to slash spending on national defense while our nation is at war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Wall Street Journal offers some penetrating analysis on the inevitably inverse relationship between government financing of \u201cguns\u201d and \u201cbutter.\u201d\u00a0 When tax receipts dwindle, appropriators often choose between funding social welfare programs (butter) and national defense (guns).\u00a0 Unsurprisingly, the European welfare state provides a cautionary example. The overlooked culprit here is the rise of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[590,588,413,589],"class_list":["post-2469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-europe","tag-national-defense","tag-wall-street-journal","tag-welfare-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2469"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2489,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions\/2489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}