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A Nation of Takers

A Nation of Takers

America’s Entitlement Epidemic

by Nicholas Eberstadt

Published by: Templeton Press

Imprint: Templeton Press

30 figures throughout

Web PDF
9781599474366
Published: October 2012

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

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 is a response from one of our leading political theorists, William Galston. In his incisive response, he questions Eberstadt’s conclusions about the corrosive effect of entitlements on character and offers his own analysis of the impact of American entitlement growth.

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

Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist and a demographer by training, holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at American Enterprise Institute. He is also a senior adviser to the National Board of Asian Research, a member of the visiting committee at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a member of the Global Leadership Council at the World Economic Forum. He researches and writes extensively on economic development, foreign aid, global health, demographics, and poverty.

William A. Galston is a political theorist. He holds the Zilkha Chair in Governance at the Brookings Institution. In addition he is College Park Professor at the University of Maryland. He was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton on domestic policy.

Yuval Levin is the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, founding editor of National Affairs magazine, and a senior editor of EPPC's journal The New Atlantis. His areas of specialty include health care, entitlement reform, economic and domestic policy, science and technology policy, political philosophy, and bioethics. Mr. Levin served on the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush focusing on health care as well as bioethics and culture-of-life issues. Mr. Levin previously served as Executive Director of the President's Council on Bioethics, and as a congressional staffer.

"Nicholas Eberstadt is a brilliant demographer and social scientist. In A Nation of Takers, his argument, though deeply informed by empirical analysis, is fundamentally a moral one. His concern is with personal—and national—character. He pleads with us to notice the ways in which a culture of dependency—and the entitlement mentality it breeds—undermines initiative, self-respect, the sense of personal responsibility, civic-mindedness, and other virtues that are indispensable to the flourishing of a free society."

– Robert P. George, Princeton University