What we’re seeing in Greece is the death spiral of the welfare state. This isn’t Greece’s problem alone, and that’s why its crisis has rattled global stock markets and threatens economic recovery. Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven’t fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies.

We don’t lose our liberty because of coups or by invasion. We lose it everyday, every time a new law is passed which increases the power of the state and diminishes the power of the individual. Most dangerous of these laws are the ones in the name of security where we are willing to throw away liberty for security as Benjamin Franklin would say. It is death by a thousand cuts.

Thus there is no need for governments to attack companies based upon some notion of protecting consumers from monopolists. When companies are forced to expend capital to defend against government attacks, they are wasting resources that could otherwise be used to better satisfy consumers.

Thus, in the name of expanding health care coverage the administration is making it harder than ever for unskilled workers to get started in the workforce. This is particularly unfortunate because adults without high school diplomas currently face an unemployment rate of 14.5%, and the unemployment rate for teens is 26%. In some ways, generic claims that President Obama should have focused more on getting Americans back to work and less on transformative legislation like health care reform are too facile. A president need not devote large amounts of time to figuring out how to improve the short-term jobs outlook because there is little a president reasonably can do to put Americans back to work in the short-term. But a president who pushes through legislation, the natural effect of which is to discourage hiring, deserves criticism when the job market lags (and even when it doesn’t). Obama has now put himself in that category.