Disability spending as self‑cannibalizing welfare trap

Welfare systems that broaden eligibility (especially via fuzzy psychiatric and functional criteria) can grow large enough to reduce workforce participation, raise borrowing needs, and incentivize the wealthy to emigrate, thereby shrinking the very tax base that funds them. That dynamic creates a fiscal–political feedback loop that is hard to reverse because beneficiaries, interest groups, and electoral politics all resist contraction. — If true, the idea reframes reform debates: fiscal sustainability and labour supply are endogenous to benefit design, so policy must address incentive structures, diagnosis criteria, and political coalitions, not only headline spending cuts.