He further observed that since the number will continue to rise, this government will probably remain in power for ever. It's a sobering thought.
Beneficiaries constitute nearly half the voting population.
If they vote en masse for the parties that promise them the greatest amount of Other People's Money, those parties will be on the treasury benches indefinitely, or at least until such time as the economy collapses under the weight of their unsustainable cannibalism. There is no such thing as a right to someone else's earnings. There IS such a right as the right to protect your earnings from the welfare cannibals who would plunder them. Those rights reflect the assumption that individuals are ends in themselves, who may not be used against their will for social purposes. Welfare rights are based on a conception of individuals as inextricably rooted in their communities, with rights to the resources of those communities.