The old welfare states are running out of money after generations of wealth redistribution, crony labor unions, state ownership and tight regulations of businesses. Obamacare mimics the European model of forcing employers to pay for the welfare state. Those policies ran out most large busnesses years ago in Europe, and per the Wall St Journal study of businesses moving investment overseas last year, it is happening to the US....The annual Index of Economic Freedom cuts through the hype and provides the actual economic reality. France is on par with Portugal, but the arrogant socialists will never give up their sense of superiority.

States that plan for the future will survive the coming end of the US as a welfare state. Look at what is happening in tiny Greece when the money runs out. "After the Welfare State" is a slim book that reviews how people handled the poor prior to government takeover in the UK in the early 20th Century, and the US in 1965. In the US medical care was something most people could afford without insurance until the big govt money destroyed the model of county and city-level of aiding the indigent. The AMA limited the medical school enrollment starting in 1910 and it is still limited. Cronyism at the expense of the common person.

Forbes Magazine defined 'death spiral' as places where those who depend on the government outnumber those who don't. In November, there were 11 US states on the list, and the usual suspects were among them, including California, New York, Illinois, etc.

The Information Age is changing everything, just as the Industrial Age did in previous centuries. Virtual is already enabling the skyrocketing number of homeschools, and the children aren't held back by being marched through because of their age. Virtual enables the ideal of learning at one's own rate. Homeschooled students outperform others by a wide margin. The public schools are now expensive babysitters with progressive textbooks and lessons.

A friend with a child in 7th grade in a suburb of Ft. Worth has related that one male teacher is teaching that communism works, it just hasn't been really tried. This is anti-education, as books abound about the failure of such an economic model...These idiots are the product of the universities whose protected elite are stuck in the 1960's nihilism. School vouchers without strings attached is the obvious first step in ousting the radicals...

Myths spread by government's Prussian-model schools have continued. Only the curious who actually search for the truth see it. Thank you, Dr. Williams, for the courage to speak the truth. Lincoln is only one among many, including the demonization of Rockefeller and other industrialists as 'robber barons'. Joseph McCarthy was a victim of the same thing, but only if you've read the translated Verona Papers from the Kremlin do you discover it. When anyone uses the term 'McCarthyism' he divulges his ignorance. Gaidar's "Russia: A Long View" is the study of civilization through the ages as it affected Russia. However, it is enlightening for anyone curious about why the war in the 1860's happened.

The details of the health care law were not revealed until after the election, but now are emerging from the IRS and the HHS. If the prez had a basic economics course, maybe he could see that what he says is nonsense. The health care law is probably the biggest job killer the US has had in decades, and every week the picture gets worse. And the Fed thinks by debasing the currency and preventing savings from accumulating value will fix it? Washington is an insane asylum and the inmates are running the place.

The Information Age, called the Electronic Revolution, is rapidly transforming just about every information-related activity, just as McLuhan predicted all those years ago. Movies are part of the old industrial age, and anyone with a video camera can now produce and sell to a big audience. Newspapers are rapidly dying for the same reason. The education model of Prussia which we still have in government schools is resisting, but only because it is funded by the government. edX is the new university, as MIT adds credits to its already-free lectures. It takes time to go from one age to another, but this article is spot-on. How many people actually go to the non-Disney movies?

Those who have studied geology and who keep up with climate science news via such blogs as Climate Depot know the truth, but those who rely on the old msm are being led by an ignorant class bent on destroying industrialization. The US and Europe are headed to 3rd world status economically.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen discovered that we have a political class that holds the opposite opinion on everything to the average citizen. The political class includes the msm, politicians in Washington and their many hangers-on. Power corrupts. Read about the dysfunction in the Soviet Union and it is identical to all the many tentacles of Washington's power. Debt destroyed the USSR as it is destroying us. The only question at this point is "Will they send in troops when states secede?" Unlike Lincoln, Stalin and Breznev, Gorbachev did not because when Poland opted out in the 1980's, troops would not fire on citizens. All empires end the same way.

Who would have ever thought the US could fall so far so fast? The answer is found in economic histories of other countries that have been down this path before us. Argentina comes to mind, but the Soviet Union is possibly more of a prophesy of our future. As Gaidar relates in "Death of an Empire", unlike Lincoln, Stalin and Breznev, when Poland elected to secede after the money ran out, Gorbachev did not send in the troops.....The more you compare the US with Europe, the more logical it seems to break up into sovereign states. (Some states did not have a housing meltdown simply because of cultural differences among the populace.)