Chris Bayliss claims Britain’s fiscal regime is driven by legally enshrined rights that obligate spending regardless of tax–spend political bargaining. Obligations fall on central government, quasi‑sovereign bodies, and implicitly on a shrinking productive base, raising sustainability risks.
— Treating welfare and services as sacrosanct rights shifts crisis risk from politics to law, forcing a rethink of entitlement design and insolvency rules.
eugyppius
2025.10.14
65% relevant
A binding climate referendum that commits a city to hard emissions caps functions like a legal obligation with spending and policy consequences baked in, similar to rights‑style mandates that constrain normal political bargaining and force resource allocation regardless of economic tradeoffs.
msmash
2025.10.01
70% relevant
The article describes Labour reversing planned pension and welfare trims amid political outcry while debt and taxes hit records, echoing the thesis that entitlement‑like commitments crowd out fiscal bargaining and raise sustainability risk in Britain.
Tyler Cowen
2025.09.02
86% relevant
Brazil’s constitution reportedly mandates about 90% of federal spending, indexes pensions to wages, and ties health/education outlays to revenue—exactly the kind of legally enshrined obligations that remove normal tax–spend bargaining and drive structural fiscal pressure.
Austin Berg
2025.08.25
86% relevant
Illinois’s constitutional 'pension protection' clause locks in benefits regardless of fiscal reality, and the article argues Chapter 9 bankruptcy could federally preempt that constraint—an exact case of legally enshrined obligations overriding budget tradeoffs.
Ben Sixsmith
2025.07.31
100% relevant
Bayliss excerpt: 'a legal settlement that obliges certain needs to be met... rather than under the normal tax vs spend trade-off... what happens when we run out of those people?'