In a democratic age, you can't buck demography - except through civil war.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Demography is destiny.
Without an educated populace, democracy cannot sustain itself.
We know from our own history that democratic institutions take decades to mature, and we know from past conflicts that freedom is not free.
There does not have to be trade-off between growth and social protection. A democracy does not mean much if it doesn't respond to the needs and will of its people.
As I understand I took most so-called democratic states about 200 years on average to build their democracies. That is why, when we go to sleep under totalitarian rule and wake up in a democracy, it makes me laugh.
I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception.
Liberal Democracy is all about extending choice. Give people the option to decide their retirement age, and you immediately extend their freedom in a very significant way.
Democracy involves that old-fashioned thing called working it out.
The problem is that the economy isn't growing fast enough to accommodate the level of spending produced through the democratic process.
The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.