Niall Ferguson: "If the young knew what was good for them they'd join the Tea Party"

The thing that most concerns me, as look out across the political landscape, is that any of this is considered controversial.

“It is surprisingly easy to win the support of young voters for policies that would ultimately make matters even worse for them, like maintaining defined benefit pensions for public employees,” he says in an article ahead of the lecture.

He adds: "If young Americans knew what was good for them, they would all be in the Tea Party."

Professor Ferguson argues the true size of government debt in Western democracies is many times larger than "deeply misleading" figures issued in the form of bonds because they do not record unfunded liabilities of social security and health care schemes.

"The last corporation to publish financial statements this misleading was Enron," he wrote.

Well, yeah.

It's horrifying how many people - how many voters - don't understand, or believe, that...