Posted on 05/09/2010 9:34:19 PM PDT by george76
Welfare states have never been disassembled by its own voters. The voters in a welfare state have been "captured", so to speak, by all the entitlements they receive. The promise by government of free healthcare, free education, free dentures, high wages, short workweeks, guaranteed paid vacations, etc., creates a dependent "entitlement" mentality. The rioting in Greece is psychologically the exact opposite of the Tea Party mentality. The former is "You promised us...you owe us!"; the latter is "There's nothing you can offer us that we can't get for ourselves, so get out of our lives and leave us alone!"
Europeans don't know a thing about that sort of mindset; it's completely foreign to them.
Obviously the solution is to protect yourself and your family first. You do what you have to do.
but didn’t they create a lot of jobs??//sarc
What is happening in Greece is definitely the collapse of the welfare state, but it also represents what I think will break out throughout all the fat and lazy western entitlement societies. The first 'revolutionary' conflicts we see will be internal fighting within the state as the lazy welfare queens all fight over the dieing corpse of statism. And of course the media organs of the state will do everything they can to hide and obscure that fact. So the Greece rioters are mad because of those evil bankers. The reality is that those evil bankers are just debt distributing agents for the state.
You have asked the fundamental question. The collapse of the welfare state, whether called by the name of modern entitlements or simply the collectivism that is one stage on the way to Communism, leads to extreme social unrest or, more frequently, totalitarianism and the brutal put-down of that unrest.
George Bush’s attempted phase-out of mandatory Social Security for the coming generations of American workers truly was one of the few attempts to tame the entitlement beast. Of course, the Rats laughed it out of the public square.
You are so very right.
Just damn.
OTOH, what was the alternative? That, unfortunately, is the fundamental conundrum here. That is why this is all so dangerous. There IS no way to address this — or attempt to address this — that is truly workable.
I would take your idea a bit further and come right out and say they have been ENSLAVED.
The welfare state is, indeed, not only IN a death spiral, it IS a death spiral.
In the U.S., I’m thinking the only way out is, as Walter Williams posits, divorce. Let the states that want to be socialist go ahead, so long as they fund their programs with THEIR money. Let the free states live free. Let there be a choice as to the level of taxation v. state services Americans want to live with or without.
This is one of the many excellent reasons for prohibiting earmarks, too. A few million here, a few million there - pretty soon we are talking serious money. If congresscritters can’t take my money and earmark it for honeybee research in their state, that helps starve the beast. It also helps reduce their political power for horsetrading on Capitol Hill and increase the chances that their constituents — no longer mollified by that $30 million for a new jukebox museum — will actually hold them accountable for how they do their job.
What is happening in Greece (and soon to visit other statist nations) epitomizes the mental composition of the leftist statists i.e. money grows on trees...you don’t have to work for a living...it’s other peoples fault....I deserve and demand lots of good things without having to work for them.
I don’t even think it’s that. The Euro’s have gone beyond things. They only desire a roof over their heads and to not have to work.
Samuelson has been one of the more truthful members of the commentariat for decades. Not necessarily a conservative, but he calls a spade a spade. George Will and Charles Krauthammer are also regular WaPost columnists. Overall the Post is definitely liberal, but they're not nearly as bad as the N.Y. Slimes.
Greece illustrates if you don’t use red line spending you going to fail,wonder if congress and Obama knows that?.
The opposite of Social Justice is Justice.
Understand that and all else falls into place.
But the central cause is not the euro, even if it has meant Greece can't depreciate its own currency to
. . . thereby setting up businessmen as "the messenger" for the consumer to "shoot" at the instigation of demagogues like Obama.
You are right. And before that collapse, the money from the low wage jobs off the books leaves the country in droves, and is sent back to the third world hell hole from which the perp arrived, further eroding the economy.
Greece should never had been allowed to join in the E.U. in the first place. Greek-style ponzi scheme was not going to last forever.
The Constitution says, in Section 10 of Article 1:
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
So, States are not allowed to coin their own monies; however, they are NOT allowed to use Federal Reserve notes to pay debts either; they MUST use Gold or Silver.
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