Even liberal journalist and Politico contributor Evan Thomas [1] has finally figured out that socialism is an unsustainable system, as he boldly proclaimed on this weekend’s syndicated Inside Washington: “The welfare state is something we can’t pay for any more.” The admission by the one-time Newsweek managing editor and co-author of the infamous Feb. 16, 2009 cover story, “We Are All Socialists Now,” [2] probably had his grandfather and six-time Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Norman Thomas [3], rolling over in his grave.
During a discussion about possible political perils for Barack Obama, on the April 20 edition of Inside Washington, Thomas cited “the specter of a European collapse,” and went on to warn:
“The welfare state is something we can’t pay for any more. It’s demographics. We used to have five workers for every retired person. Now we have there. We’re soon gonna have two. Europe is even ahead of us on these demographics. We cannot afford the benefits we all got accustomed to. And the political system has not figured out how to adjust to that.”
This is quite a drastic 180 degree turn from Thomas who, along with Jon Meacham, just three years ago wrote the following [4] in the aforementioned “We Are All Socialists” issue:
“If we fail to acknowledge the reality of the growing role of government in the economy, insisting instead on fighting 21st-century wars with 20th-century terms and tactics, then we are doomed to a fractious and unedifying debate. The sooner we understand where we truly stand, the sooner we can think more clearly about how to use government in today’s world....Whether we like it or not - or even whether many people have thought much about it or not - the numbers clearly suggest that we are headed in a more European direction.”
The following is the relevant exchange as it was aired on the April 20, 2012 edition of Inside Washington:
GORDON PETERSON: Many years ago I was interviewing the great Teddy White, author of The Making of the Presidents
book and he congratulated me on my skill in asking the questions and
then I asked him a question. He said, “That’s an amateur’s question.” He
said the cardinal rule of politics is you can’t look around corners. So
we’re talking about unknowns. You mentioned the, the European crisis.
What are the other unknowns out there Evan?
EVAN THOMAS, POLITICO: Well the, just a month ago it looked like the
big threat was gonna be Iran. That if Israel bombed Iran you could have
a, you know, regional war and who knew what that would do to oil prices?
And that could bring down Obama. But David Ignatius had an interesting
column this week. It’s just a straw in the wind but David Ignatius is a
pretty well-informed guy. That maybe there’s a deal in the works on
Iran. I don’t know quite what’s in it, but something that would take
that off the boils. So that Iran would not be the threat to the Obama
administration.
But just as that was happening the word comes out of Europe that
Spanish banks are in trouble. Spain is in a full-blown depression. And
so, once again, the specter of a European collapse - I’m sure at the
White House they’re plenty worried about that.
COLBY KING, WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST: Europe has a big problem. The
way in which those economies have been working. They, they are
overspending. They haven’t adjusted the way they should have. And now
they have to go through this painful, painful adjustment process. It’s
not just Spain. Greece is not out of the woods. Italy is not out of the
woods. Portugal is hanging in there.
THOMAS: It, it, it’s Western democracy. The welfare state is
something we can’t pay for any more. It’s demographics. We used to have
five workers for every retired person. Now we have three. We’re soon
gonna have two. Europe is even ahead of us on these demographics. We
cannot afford the benefits we all got accustomed to. And the political system has not figured out how to adjust to that.
NINA TOTENBERG, NPR: Well and they did have, in Europe, an even worse
real estate bubble than we did. I mean people were building houses and
getting loans-
PETERSON: Ireland!
TOTENBERG: -and I mean just for on a song. And in huge numbers. But,
you know, this is something to worry about. And you - the Germans are
the only secure ones. They are the ones funding the bailout, as it were.
But they want austerity and only austerity. And there is a lot of
tension between them and other parts of Europe in terms of not
decimating their economies. And if you look at that New York Times poll
this week and you see how precarious, how precariously most Americans
feel they’re perched in terms of their economic future. We on
this panel, we’re pretty comfortable. If gas goes up to $5 we complain
but it doesn’t threaten our, our security. For most Americans or at
least a substantial portion of Americans – I think it’s 4 in 10, I
think it’s something like that – that’s not true!
PETERSON: Charles?
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: But the reason is not
overbuilt housing. The reason is what Evan is talking about. The utterly
inevitable and predictable results of an aging population and high
technology. We live longer. At the time Social Security was instituted
the, the, the life span, average life span was 62 years in the United
States. It’s now about 80 years. And with high technology people end up
living longer and it costs. We die of cancer and Alzheimer’s which are
expensive and not heart attacks which are inexpensive. That is an
inevitable fact. And the tragedy is that it’s happening in Europe before
it’s gonna happen here. Because it’s a much more entitlement state. So
it gives us a few years of leeway where we can do something, and we are
not doing anything. And that’s why I think we have one chance, in
probably the next three or four years, to actually change this. And it
can be done. It’s not hard to do. Entitlement reform and tax reform. And
we are utterly stuck and unable to do it on either side.
Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Click here [5] to follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.