From the Times of India, a good economics article from Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar. (H/T Shalini)

Excerpt:

Politicians and activists constantly propose new rights — the right to work, to education, and now to food. The word “rights” is being twisted to mean entitlements, and there is a big difference.

Rights are freedoms from oppression by the state or by society (through ethnicity, religion and gender). These rights do not entail government handouts.  Entitlements, however, are welfare measures entailing government handouts. Rights are not limited by budget constraints, but entitlements are. So, rights are universal but entitlements are not.

[…]US economists calculate that three welfare measures — social security (for the aged), Medicare (for the aged) and Medicaid (for the poor)—will triple from 7% of GDP to 20% in the next decade, swallowing up virtually all federal tax revenue. Jagadeesh Gokhale of the Cato Institute calculates that, including social security, the US is headed for a national debt that’s 500% of GDP, and Europe of 434%.

Some much for entitlement spending. He then explains the origin of human rights in Britain, America and France, and then says this:

These three countries spearheaded the concept of fundamental rights. In all three, rights were about freedoms, not entitlements

In subsequent centuries, people said this was not enough, and proposed entitlements — which some called second-generation rights. Marxists declared that rights to free speech, elections and personal freedom were bourgeois illusions that did not empower the poor. So Lenin proposed a dictatorship of the proletariat that took away all basic freedoms, and instead offered the right to food, shelter and work. Mind you, nobody could sue Lenin for poor provision. Nobody could throw out Mao for the Great Leap Forward that killed 30 million people. Nobody could topple Stalin for murdering four to six million peasants in the Ukraine.

The communist experience shows that giving welfare rights priority over basic freedoms is the road to serfdom. And the capitalist welfare state now shows that entitlements, although desirable and inevitable in democracies, must be limited and targeted at the needy, so that they do not hog all spending or bankrupt governments.

It’s amazing. He’s more American than the Democrats, because he actually understands America. Thanks so much for finding this article, Shalini!

By the way, if you want to learn what the end-game is for the Democrats, you can read “The Road to Serfdom” by the Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek, which Swami alluded to in his article.