With a nod to the rise of Asia and other emerging economies, he asserted that Britain needs to "do or decline", by changing its approach to education, state pensions and other spending, if it is to compete with ambitious countries less attached to past entitlements.
We should judge claims that ObamaCare will save money in the context of the optimistic cost assumptions of past entitlements.
She continued: "It allows the past to define our entitlements in the present; it relies on a belief in the justice of inheritance...
I fear that both in the U.S. and Europe, vested interests, past mismanagement, massive entrenched entitlements, a lack of political will and agenda-driven politicians has created a fiscal deficit cycle that no amount of economic growth can remedy.
As for Medicare and Social Security, I've objected in the past to calling them "entitlements".
And Republicans have been arguing this for 10 years now -- and they've gotten vilified by the Democrats in the past for even mentioning entitlement reform -- so that it is more efficient, so that there are services that are promised to you, you get.
"And, yes, that means that some multibillion-pound spending commitments we have promoted in the past – like new free childcare entitlements, a new citizen's pension or free personal care – will no longer be firm commitments in our manifesto, but will be put on hold until they become affordable again.
"Since the judgment was issued, we and GMB have spoken to hundreds of Uber drivers who wish to claim compensation for Uber's failure to provide these entitlements in the past, as well as to ensure that they are paid at least the national minimum wage and holiday pay in future," said Nigel MacKay, the lawyer representing the claimants.
Use the Congressional deficit supercommittee to embrace the sort of new social contract we've been circling around for the past few years: simpler taxes, reformed entitlements, more money for human capital, growth and innovation.
But corruption is a large and growing problem, entangled with a culture of black entitlement to compensate for past suffering under apartheid.
When we shift all our energy from all the whining and crying and entitlement of what the past was, we're going to figure it out.
