Charles W. Johnson on entitlement

No one has a right to food, water, shelter, money, or love if he must obtain it at the expense of the owner. Medical care is no more a right than these. Man rightfully obtains goods and services by producing them from nature or by voluntary exchange with others. Man may exchange goods, services, and emotional values, but he must trade to obtain them. Otherwise he is a thief acting against human existence.

~ Charles W. Johnson

Ron Paul on the true size of the national debt

The official national debt figure, now approaching $9 trillion, reflects only what the government owes in current debts on money already borrowed. It does not reflect what the federal government has promised to pay millions of Americans in entitlement benefits down the road. Those future obligations put our real debt figure at roughly fifty trillion dollars - a staggering sum that is about as large as the total household net worth of the entire United States. Your share of this fifty trillion amounts to about $175,000.

If present trends continue, by 2040 the entire federal budget will be consumed by Social Security and Medicare alone. To close the long-term entitlement gap, the U.S. economy would have to grow by double digits every year for the next 75 years.

~ Congressman Ron Paul, March 6, 2007

Bernanke on dealing with entitlements

The right time to start is about 10 years ago.

~ Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman, warning lawmakers that a failure to deal with the budgetary strains posed by an aging U.S. population could lead to serious economic harm, as reported in Time, February 5, 2007