Posted on 05/24/2015 6:42:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
Regular readers of my column know that after tax season is over my wife and I take off for a while and typically travel the world. We do not do tours or cruises as we want to be in amongst the locals to touch and feel what is going on wherever we are visiting. This year our trip was to Spain and Croatia with short stops in Milan and London. We also spent some time in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro.
We started in Spain, a wonderful country we had not visited since 1987. There are many areas to visit and enjoy in the country, but this time we went to Madrid, San Sebastian and Barcelona. By traveling via car, we were able to get immersed in the country. Walking the streets, shopping and taking in their restaurants, you get a chance to interact with the people and hear their thoughts and their concerns. Spain is a first-world country with the fifth-largest economy in the Euro Zone and the 15th largest in the world.
It also has an unemployment rate of 23.2%. To provide perspective, the highest year of unemployment during our Great Depression was 1933 at 24.75%. There was only one other year during the Depression where we had an unemployment rate over 20%. Spain has had rates like this for a while, yet walking around the cities you could not discern a problem. In fact, the only time we had an indication of a problem was when we went to dinner the first night. We created a nice relationship with the owner and his wife who was also the chef. When dinner was over we were baffled as to what rate to tip and we ended up asking the wife/chef. She stated “Before the crisis people would give 10%.” Looking around wherever we went the next nine days you could not tell this country was in “crisis.”
Two thoughts come to mind regarding this. Thankfully, this country of about 47 million people is not in mass riots. I am also thankful I was born in a country that was founded by the British. When you think of countries with a heritage from Spain, they are largely a mess. When you think of countries where the rule of law exists that were established by England – the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore – they are fundamentally more economically successful and financially stable than countries that were part of the Spanish empire. Think Argentina.
We were also in Italy which has a 12.7% unemployment rate, but then we went to the United Kingdom which has a current rate of 5.7%, but still high compared to what we used to think of as a “stable” rate.
The interesting thing I found while researching these rates was that the labor participation rate in the United Kingdom is 73.3%. That struck me since the participation rate in America is at a modern historical low of 62.7%. Republicans have bemoaned the participation rate during the falling unemployment rates of the Obama Administration, stating they are misleading since more and more people have just fallen out of the work force. George Will often cites that if the labor participation rate today was the same as when Obama became president, the unemployment rate in America would be over 10%. You now have some perspective for the number that is bantered around. Just think how many more Americans would be employed if our labor participation rate matched the United Kingdom’s.
Another thing we found baffling in Spain, Milano and London (not so much in Croatia) is it was hard to find locally-born individuals. Most of the help we encountered at our hotels, stores and restaurants were from other countries. I know the countries we visited have declining birth rates, but, when you have unemployment rates like Spain or Italy, why would you import workers unless the locals felt the work was beneath them? A restaurant we bopped into in Milan had only two Italians working there – the owner and one other. The man making the pizzas was from Egypt and the rest of the staff was from El Salvador, The Dominican Republic and Mauritius. This was a great asset to attract tourists since they had staff speaking so many languages. Our Concierge in London (a local) told us that the English did not like working in the service industry. He was the head Concierge and he was the only native-born person on that staff.
There is only one reason these countries would allow people to come and work in these jobs while not requiring their citizens fill the spots. That is the massive growth of the welfare state. When the government hands out money people don’t have to take jobs -- they can live off other people’s money. You may have noticed that our unemployment started to plummet a couple years back when we stopped the extension of unemployment benefits.
We once again experienced why we love to travel outside our country -- whether we are going west, south or east. And we once again experienced why we love America and want to keep it the way it was before we had a massive government.
The US is in it's "fascism" phase now. Our "total collapse" phase is ahead of us.
The same is happening here. Americans don’t want to work and have some means of getting food, clothing and shelter without appreciable work. This can not end well.
Yes, there's only one reason - but it has nothing to do with welfare.
At the present TFR, the Spanish population with four Spanish grandparents will fall by 50% every 25 years or so.
I’ve really been focused on the “post-scarcity” society concept. We have “stuff”. That’s not much of any issue now. What is very much an issue is behavior. How do we want people to behave, and now can we encourage that sort of behavior. In a world where food, clothing and shelter are handed to people without appreciable work, you end up with a lot of Fergusons and Baltimores.
I think we need to find ways to build social values so that people want to use their time in positive ways. It’s no longer about “working and earning” but it should be about “doing and living right”.
Unfortunately, the political class seems focused on creating a feudal world in which the peasants labor and suffer and the lords live in the castle on the hill. I do not support redistribution, but I fail to see why the political class should have all the power and all the goodies. They are just looters.
If he’s so concerned, he could have vacationed in the US to keep his dollars here and help keep hotel and eatery employees on the job.
After tax season, I rarely have money for gas to get me to the next town.
Yes...what YOU said!!!
The author believes the myth. He is well meaning in his delusions. He actually thinks that Europe’s welfare state is greater than the good old USA. If he bothered to read Mark Steyn over the years, he would have learned that red blooded Americans get more in handouts and freebies than their European cousins. While Europeans are more honest about themselves, Americans still like to think of themselves as rugged individuals as they snarf up all the free stuff.
Doesn’t everybody take some time off every year to travel the world?
He and his wife sure aren’t doing that with kids.
"I'm just an ordinary person. I'm just like you. You know, I summer on the Riviera, I spend the fall doing the usual circuit of Asia and North America, giving a few speeches here and there. I generally ski in Vail and Aspen in the winter -- I avoid the Alps because I'm not a rich person, and in the Spring I focus on my downtime on Martha's Vineyard. I feel I understand working Americans because I have a lot in common with them."
LOL, ain’t it he truth.
I was in France recently and noticed much the same. Hotel cleaning and wait staff were largely immigrants. The few local restaurants I went to seemed to have French owners, but mostly immigrant cooks and wait staff. Our tour leader spoke excellent French and English, but was from Romania. The local city and museum guides were French.
A lot of the museum guards and room watchers were Blacks or browns and may have been immigrants, but I didn’t speak to them. If I did, they indicated they didn’t speak English.
The souvenir hawkers everywhere were Blacks and the guide said they were part of a crime cartel that used Africans to sell & paid the cops to leave them alone.
Spain is actually doing better than many of the EU countries, thanks to the “austerity” programs that trimmed the welfare and unemployment budget. Sadly, Spain, like Italy, had a serious dip in birth rate and needs younger workers. But Spain has been pretty good on getting them from Latin America, which shares Christianity and Western cultural standards. Leaving aside the fact that Europeans, Latin Americans and North Americans increasingly don’t practice Christianity and are forgetting their culture, the Latin Americans and Poles and even Christian Africans from the English or French former colonies more or less fit in and Most of them want to adapt.
Spain has relatively low Muslim immigration, and spends a fortune repelling them at the borders with Morocco.
However, all of the European countries have been overwhelmed by these boatloads of mostly Muslim “refugees” - Syrians, Sudanese, etc. who are arriving on the shores of the Mediterranean by the hundreds of thousands. And instead of sending them back, the EU is now insisting that every country take some.
Of course, the EU countries don’t have to worry about the “refugees” competing for jobs, because they go directly onto welfare, start having huge numbers of children, demanding that the entire society adapt to Islam, etc. these countries can’t afford to support a privileged class of Muslim leeches aiming at taking them over and I think there will be major problems soon.
“Francisco Franco is still dead”
That Chevy Chase line is as puerile now as it was in 1975 when Franco died, having stabilized the Spanish economy, restored the Spanish King, and left a democratic framework in Spain that lasts to this day. Some dictator.
The Left in America will always lament that Stalin-backed communists failed to win the Spanish Civil War, while ignoring the fact that Franco kept his war-ravaged nation out of WWII.
Spain’s troubles today are IMO the result of one Socialist government after another since 1981. Look what Peronista socialism has done for Argentina more than sixty years after Evita croaked.
Spain also has a Muslim problem worse than other countries as it was once conquered Moorish territory & today’s muzzies want it back.
Oops - I’d better address your point about fascism in America. Fascism came to power in other countries due to massive national upheavals: Italy after WWI, Germany mired in depression & reparations, some even say Kemal Ataturk’s secularizing Turkey was fascistic but this was after defeating Greek invasion & winning a civil war.
What do we have? Race riots in a few crummy cities that dominate the news. Out of control government agencies? Massed citizens with guns have stood up to them. Local cops armed to the teeth? That is the result of local decisionmakers. NSA supersurveillance? Under attack & NSA’s critics are not disappearing in the night. Government confiscating citizens’ guns? Maybe in NY & MA, but nowhere else.
Shall I go on? Government seizing control of the mass media? Laughable if they try, the internet & social media are not going back into the toothpaste tube. OK, I get it, sometimes it’s fun to be scared; why do people go to the cinema to watch horror movies?
No doubt there are incipient fascists in government & academia who think the masses must be reeducated. But genuine crack-the-whip fascism is found mostly on college campuses where little tinpot dictators dominate the curriculum & stifle free speech in real terms.
Been stopped at a police checkpoint lately? I’ve lived in countries where that is normal & to be put up with.
Now - to your point that total collapse is ahead of us - that needs to be addressed. What form will it take? Collapse of the national currency? Google “German hyperinflation 1923” to see such a collapse and the decisions which preceded it.
Breakdown of law & order? I grew up reading post-atomic-aftermath novels. Read “Alas Babylon” or watch “Panic in Year Zero”. Again, it takes a cataclysmic event to trigger most forms of national collapse.
Barack Hussein Obama giving stupid speeches to Muslims while endorsing homosexual “marriage”? We know he wishes he had dictatorial powers, he’s already said the Constitution is an obstacle & a nuisance to what he’s like to do to this country. But is he the American Hitler? Ha!
Upbeat conclusion: AR-15s for sale in hardware store for $500. Americans are arming to the teeth & marching in open carry protests in front of state capitols. And the 101st Airborne Div hasn’t been called out against them.
I could go on, but I feel more optimistic already for our nation. Have a great Memorial Day & remember those who gave their all for our freedoms.
Spain? Heck, we’ll be lucky if don’t become Mexico!
The imported foreigners in Europe, like the imported foreigners in the US, are replacing the generations of batives that aren’t being born. There are not hordes of Europeans on the dole (though there are some); there just aren’t very many Europeans left. Same is happening in the US; anyone passing a schoolyard or playground knows that our under-20 population is about 75% “foreign” (including those born here of imported parents). Americans deceived themselves that other Americans were still having families “somewhere else”; Denver’s Cinco De Mayo festivals going on for several years put that myth to rest.
And the question is: Who will be the next Fascist leader of the US appointed to the Presidency by the Cabal of Corporatists that run the country?
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