Mark Steyn says that the spending and debt is just the symptom of a deeper character issue. (H/T The Way The Ball Bounces)
Excerpt:
And, without serious course correction, America is doomed. It starts with the money. For dominant powers, it always does – from the Roman Empire to the British Empire. “Declinism” is in the air these days, but for us full-time apocalyptics we’re already well past that stage. In the space of one generation, a nation of savers became the world’s largest debtors, and a nation of makers and doers became a cheap service economy.
[…]At the lower end, Americans are educated at a higher cost per capita than any nation except Luxembourg in order to do minimal-skill checkout-line jobs about to be rendered obsolete by technology. At the upper end, America’s elite goes to school till early middle age in order to be credentialed for pseudo-employment as $350 grand-a-year diversity consultants (Michelle Obama) or in one of the many other phony-baloney makework schemes deriving from government micro-regulation of virtually every aspect of endeavor.
[…]As I said, the decline of great powers invariably starts with the money. When government spends on the scale Washington’s got used to, that’s not a spending issue, it’s a moral one. There’s nothing virtuous about “caring” “compassionate” “progressives” being caring and compassionate and progressive with money yet to be earned by generations yet to be born. That’s what “fiscal conservatives” often miss: This isn’t a green-eyeshade issue. Increasing dependency, disincentivizing self-reliance, absolving the citizenry from responsibility for their actions: The multitrillion-dollar debt catastrophe is not the problem but merely the symptom. It’s not just about balancing the books, but about something more basic and profound.
I think that the problem is that people, even conservatives, have bought into the idea that life is about having fun – having a good time. It’s like there is no way we ought to be, and that there is no respect for doing what it takes to be cautious, frugal and self-reliant. No one is trying to build a life apart from government, anymore. We are all just pursuing pleasurable experiences – and we want someone else to take care of us. We are not studying difficult subjects in school, not taking on difficult jobs, and we aren’t willing to delay gratification. Somehow, we have decided that it is government’s job to equalize life outcomes regardless of our decisions.
This speech by George Will highlights the dangers of dependency on government.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Which brings us to the dangers of dependency on credit cards.
Here is a new peppy 1-minute video giving people advice on the responsible use of debit, ATM and credit cards.
“Card Tricks Revealed: How Not To Burn Money”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKRHiA0tYCc
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I think you’ve hit on something with the last paragraph, though I’m not sure it’s purely to do with the expansion of the welfare state (though no doubt that plays its part).
My take on it is that since the beginning of recorded history, we’ve learned to equate work with toil and drudgery – the sweat of our collective brows. But, of course, we’ve been ingenious in our invention of labour-saving devices – and at no time more so than in the last two centuries. So we ended up in a state in which people became convinced that we can look forward to being set free to become ladies and gentlemen of leisure, while all the real work will be done by machines, or, in the short to medium term, by swarms of peons from developing countries.
Of course, things rarely work out as planned; and we’ve belatedly become aware that work that produces something is much more satisfying than mere pointless activity. Meanwhile, we’re waking up to the injustice of getting fat off the labour of others, and, of more practical importance, the others in question are almost certainly beginning to realise it too.
In terms of the value of the goods actually produced (as opposed to activity spent chasing little green pieces of paper around), it wouldn’t surprise me if China’s already wealthier than the USA, even if not per capita. And if they decide to stop selling us their stuff on the grounds that we can no longer afford it, I dare say we’d be back to scraping a living from primary production real quick.
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