Why, indeed. When the middle class is paying the poor to live above the means of that very same middle class — and can vote to keep it that way — the country is well on its way to collapse.

Just to give you some perspective on the numbers Krauthammer was decrying this morning. Washington Examiner: Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., one of the House’s highest-profile conservatives, said that Democratic discontent highlights the difference between the two parties. “The compromise that was forged wasn’t rich enough for Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats,” Bachmann said on NBC’s “Today” show, referring to Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “They want the taxes up even higher. And

Gary Jason, RCP: The UAW was given a big chunk of new GM in the crooked bankruptcy settlement. To be precise, the very monster that drove GM off the cliff — the UAW — received 35% of the stock in the new company. With the sale of the stock in the new GM, the UAW earned an immediate $3.4 billion in selling about one third of its shares. Moreover, if

Cafe Hayek’s Don Boudreaux reprints his letter to the LA Times: You write that “Washington’s compromise on estate taxes provides an unnecessary handout to a few thousand wealthy families” (“The state of estates,” Dec. 9). Whatever are the merits, or lack thereof, of a tax on estates, you are deceptively wrong to call a decision not to raise that tax a “handout.” Because taxes are paid from resources created and

Krauthammer: Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 – and House Democrats don’t have a clue that he did. In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years – which just happen to be the two years