America’s Entitlement Epidemic
A Nation of Takers
Details and Description
Description
In A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic, one of our country’s foremost demographers, Nicholas Eberstadt, details the exponential growth in entitlement spending over the past fifty years. As he notes, in 1960, entitlement payments accounted for well under a third of the federal government’s total outlays. Today, entitlement spending accounts for a full two-thirds of the federal budget. Drawing on an impressive array of data and employing a range of easy- to- read, four color charts, Eberstadt shows the unchecked spiral of spending on a range of entitlements, everything from medicare to disability payments. But Eberstadt does not just chart the astonishing growth of entitlement spending, he also details the enormous economic and cultural costs of this epidemic. He powerfully argues that while this spending certainly drains our federal coffers, it also has a very real,long-lasting, negative impact on the character of our citizens.
Also included in the book are responses to Eberstadt’s argument from other leading political theorists, William Galston—who questions Eberstadt’s causal links between government programs and dependence—and Yuval Levin—who suggests that the problems posed by dependence may, in fact, run even deeper than Eberstadt suggests. A final response from Eberstadt puts everything in perspective and invites the rest of us to lend our voices to the conversation.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments / ix
Part I: America’s Growing Dependency on Government Entitlements
The Rise of Entitlements in Modern America, 1960–2010
Nicholas Eberstadt / 3
Part II: Dissenting Points of View
Have We Become a “Nation of Takers”?
William A. Galston / 93
Civil Society and the Entitlement State
Yuval Levin / 115
Epilogue: Response to Galston and Levin / 129
About the Contributors / 133
Endorsements and Reviews
Reviews
Foreign Affairs–May/June Issue
People wanting a quick introduction to one of the most important policy debates in the United States today (and one with significant implications for global power politics, if Eberstadt’s analysis is correct) will do well to consult this useful work.
DianeMarkins.com--3/22/13
This little book will light a fire under you to hold our elected officials accountable for the programs and mountainous spending that increases every year. Did you know that in 2010 entitlement programs accounted for 18% of personal income? I didn’t! From $24 million in 1960 to $2.2 trillion in 2010—that’s nearly 100 times more than was allocated 50 years ago. Stunning and sad.
Online Library of Law and Liberty--10/27/12
There’s much for thought in this small book. I’ll say this: as both presidential contenders recognize, this is a debate the country does not want to have. Over the next four years of drift and deficits, though, maybe we’ll come to recognize that we have to have the debate. A Nation of Takers is a fine place to start.
FrontPageMag.com--12/10/12
Reining in entitlement spending is a major problem that everybody needs to focus on. And a good place to start is Nicholas Eberstadt’s A Nation of Takers. Eberstadt’s grim documentation of the reckless expansion of what he calls the “vast and colossal empire of entitlement payments that it [the state] protects, manages, and finances,” and his analysis of the ill effects such transfers have had on the American character should be read by everyone serious about the fiscal threats to our way of life.
American Enterprise Institute (blog: aei-ideas.org)--10/25/12
My colleague Nick Eberstadt has a very short, very accessible, and very important new book out this week entitled A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic. In the book, Eberstadt details the rise in America’s entitlement culture over the last half-century and the increasing strain this is placing on our nation’s finances, as well as our cultural fabric.
Washington Post--10/26/12
The election-eve mood is tinged with sadness stemming from well-founded fear that America’s new government is subverting America’s old character. Barack Obama’s agenda is a menu of temptations intended to change the nation’s social norms by making Americans comfortable with the degradation of democracy. This degradation consists of piling up public debt that binds unconsenting future generations to finance current consumption.
So argues Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist and demographer at American Enterprise Institute, in A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic. This booklet could be Mitt Romney’s closing argument.
Values and Capitalism--10/24/12
Through his concise analysis of a massive amount of data on entitlement expenditures or “transfers” in America over the past 50 years, Nicholas Eberstadt’s Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic connects the nation’s growing dependence on government programs to negative changes in the character of both our government and our citizens.
If Eberstadt’s data on the explosion of welfare weren’t arresting enough, Yuval Levin’s thoughtful response to Eberstadt certainly is. Levin is the editor of National Affairs, and he suggests that the roots of the welfare epidemic are even deeper than Eberstadt supposes.
The Weekly Standard--Vol. 18, No. 06--10/22/12
Readers will be familiar with the work of Nicholas Eberstadt, the nation’s bravest and most prescient demographer, from his appearances in the Wall Street Journal, the National Interest, and (of course!) The Weekly Standard. For 30 years Eberstadt has written eloquently of, and demonstrated pitilessly, the devastating moral and economic consequences of tyranny in the world, from China to the old Soviet Union to North Korea. And now, just in time for the election, he has published A Nation of Takers (Templeton Press) about a subtler form of tyranny closer to home—the “soft tyranny” that Alexis de Tocqueville warned of in Democracy in America.
Tocqueville was referring to the comprehensive blandishments of the state that slowly drain from a citizenry the self-reliance and initiative self-government requires. With vivid charts and graphs and elegant prose, Eberstadt shows the rise of the entitlement state in the United States and the effects, moral and economic, it threatens to have on the country’s character. In the book’s closing pages, William Galston and Yuval Levin offer rebuttals and comments, crisply laying out the grand and overarching issue that separates our two political parties. A Nation of Takers is a must-read this election season—and, at 144 pages, a quick one to boot. Tocqueville would be impressed, and slightly alarmed.
MercatorNet--October 27, 2012
The title of his book says it all: A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic. Driving the detailed statistical case he presents is a passionate argument that his country is squandering its moral as well as material capital. It stubbornly refuses to address its appetite for handouts and its habit of dependency — even to the point of mortgaging the next generation.
The Joplin Globe--November 19, 2012
Eberstadt’s chilling, chart-filled book shows our metastasizing tumor of debt is growing out of control fueled by members of both parties eager to leverage the unborn’s future for votes.