Europe’s dilemma…
…and ours, as seen by Janet Daley:
We have arrived at the endgame of what was an untenable doctrine: to pay for the kind of entitlements that populations have been led to expect by their politicians, the wealth-creating sector has to be taxed to a degree that makes it almost impossible for it to create the wealth that is needed to pay for the entitlements that populations have been led to expect, etc, etc.
“The idea that a capitalist economy can support a socialist welfare state is collapsing before our eyes, says Janet Daley.”
The headline is correct however, the article does not address the reality that no form of wealth generation can support a socialist welfare state. Without motivation to provide for, and improve themselves, the masses just share the economic and moral misery under the slogans of “equality” of result.
So once again they are discovering that socialism without limits is unworkable… I will concede that if it were possible to say that only 1 billion dollars ever is used for such, without going up, or down, and with actual cash in hand… that would work… but anything else, would not work… as misery ALWAYS exceeds good and beneficial, even without the bizarre silliness of making up stuff.
since capitalism works, what is antithetical to it is not a greater working, but by definition what doesnt work…
ergo ipso facto… its not here cause its valid, its here because a mental bomb of self destruction is something we dont believe in or even pretend to take seriously as far as the power of ideas, empiricism, etc..
poison a mind, and you poison behavior and production… and if you dont get them to like the poison, they would just spit it out…
how long is the history of the damage of a planted idea or worry at a bad time?
“It’s hard to see how we avoid a Tea-Party recession if the president who has the biggest megaphone in the country is not willing to speak clearly on the issue,” Justin Ruben
Socialism doesn’t even work among family members that love each other if things get too wopsided into producers and parasite factions. How it’s supposed to work among a nation of producers and parasites of an opposite political ideology is a rather absurd concept on its face.
Man’s wants are limitless, man’s resources limited.
Ergo, socialism cannot work.
Occam, i would also add to the list of legitimate wants, the endless list of invented ones… infinity squared… 🙂
I’ve thought for a long time that the Left/Socialists believe the one thing they haven’t had, the one thing standing between them and the success of their enterprise, their vision, is a wealthy society to start with. That alone put this country in their (dare I say it?) cross-hairs. One of the more interesting things about what we’re seeing now is that the failure is happening even faster, and more destructively, than in Europe (of course that may have something to do with the groundwork that was laid over the last 70 or so years). I hope we can salvage our country. I have to say I’m not optimistic, but that doesn’t make me think we shouldn’t try with every ounce of energy we can muster.
Aint momentum a biatch..
Socialism is belief in the fantasy that we can all live high on the hog at evervbody else’s expense. As Margret Thatcher pointed out, socialism is wonderful till you run out of other people’s money.
Excellent essay. Makes the issues plain and understandable – if you have an open mind. I’m quite sure there are millions, Barack Obama among them, that would dismiss this as agit prop from the TEA Party.
betsybounds said:
“hope we can salvage our country. I have to say I’m not optimistic, but that doesn’t make me think we shouldn’t try with every ounce of energy we can muster.”
I agree and that means we must all work as hard as we can with all the resources we have to win the 2012 election.
Otherwise, the markets will stop our senseless fantasy for us…the hard way.
Will American voters choose socialism if it postpones the reckoning for five years or so? They might, if the Gramscian project has made sufficient inroads. They might, if the alternative is framed, fairly or not, as an alliance of religious fanatics and kleptocrats.
Pretty much the question, gs., except if might not even be five years.
The fealty of subjects towards kings is a troublesome subject. We, in America, do not believe in kings, per se, and yet, we do. Whether you are Christian and believe in God as king; or whether you are progressive and believe in Utopia–or the state–as king, we do and don’t believe in kings. A king has the answer, and that is what we need right now. A king, King Obama, said he would deliver us. He has not. The difference, here, between progressive kings and Christian kings is the realm which they rule. Christian kings rule the inner realm of the heart and leave politics alone, hence, freedom is possible. Freedom, understood as more than merely freedom from want and need. Ironic, is it not, that the freedom that king obama offers is not the freedom that the Christian king offers and what you get with the Christian king is both but with Obama is neither.
Entitlement mentality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhgAPKY7R_I
When the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire will that be enough to pay down the debt? Not a chance. Will it provide them with enough money to not bust the budget? Not likely since they, dems & repubs, have a list of things they want to do.
Curtis –
Very well put, and very astute. I heartily concur with your analysis.
Your last sentence reminds me of the immortal words of Blaise Pascal (in my preferred translation):
“He who plays the angel, acts the beast.”
And while we’re on the subject of Pascal, here are a few more choice quotes relevant to your post, followed by my comments in parentheses:
* “We only really know God when we know our own sin. And those who have known God without knowing their own wretchedness have not glorified Him but have glorified themselves.”
(The choice between King Progress and God).
* “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
(I think Pascal was having a vision of our unfunded liabilities here 🙂
* “We run carelessly over the precipice after having put something in front of us to prevent us seeing it.”
(Unfortunately Obama uses metaphors like this all the time, but it’s good to be reminded that the point of those who invented them was that we tend to put ourselves in front of us. I think of it like this: Liberals/progs believe that greed is ultimately THE sin. Conservatives know that pride is worse – it was Satan’s sin after all. Misunderstanding sin as the left does allows pride to seep through, and that goeth, of course, before the fall.)
* “There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.”
(Again the greed/pride distinction. Those who are constantly vigorous against pride will also be tempted less by greed; but nothing is easier than for absolute hatred of greed to become a wicked sort of pride. The “righteous who think they are sinners” do so because they know they are prideful and greedy to some degree – i.e. that we are fallen, having been successfully tempted by the Prideful Liar himself; on the other hand, the “sinners who think they are righteous” do so because they mistake greed for the whole of sin – the very notion of fallenness means nothing to them.)
One more thing on this theme and then I’ll shut trap. If we follow the pride/greed distinction back to the notion of fallenness or original sin we can derive an interesting picture of the difference between liberals and conservatives (whether or not they are believers). Conservatives understand the story as we’ve said: pride before the fall, tempted by the Serpent. But how does the liberal understand it? It sometimes seems to me that they’re inclined to believe that God is the villain in the story. Adam and Eve wanted to be free and easy in all things; the Serpent merely encouraged their lifestyle choices and “experiments in living.” God, however, is an authoritarian, Manichaean, irrationally
(sorry I hit submit before I finished)…
…irrationally punitive power-monger. He’s a greedy conservative tyrant. Or at least that’s how many liberals I know are wont to see it (admittedly not a representative lot, they).
Ok, now I’m finished.
People should click on the link and read the entire article. It is so right on target.
The Euro zone is a mirror and we are the reflection. Greece is but a pebble in the global economy, but a pebble can be the start of an avalanche. 3 years after the market crash of 1929 an Austrian bank (I forget the name and am too lazy to find it) collapsed. That collapse was the first falling domino that traveled around the globe in a matter of weeks and lead to bank failures all across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Somewhere in Europe today there is a large regional bank teetering towards collapse. Italy or Spain are the likely locations. Pay attention to these 2 because they are too big to save.
The momentum is with the bears, not the bulls. As Yogi once said, “Its deja vu all over again.” Once the panic starts its like wild fire. http://tinyurl.com/3buk5a6
Tragically the morons who voted Obambi in will vote again in 2012. Frankly at this point I can see NV, CO and PA going Dem, which means four more years of Obama which means we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Nothing stunning has occurred as a result of entitlement deficit spending, essentially politically opportunistic over reaching, which should exhibit itself as more than accelerating (international) inflation, so much for the left’s charity to the poor, one wonders how they can still be in denial when half of Europe and now even America has the disease. The real looming problem is the possibility of an expanded military conflagration with Iran and company, nuclear war comes of age; and when circumstances are convenient, the chinese communists will flex their muscle. Then we will have a real crisis…. If anyone has registered any of my loose, occasional comments, we are at the beginning of the 21st century, with strong parallels to the 20th, what’s coming could boggle the imagination if we don’t establish responsible adult leadership first in America, then demand it of the rest of the world. The left-wing are notorious incompetents and mass murderers, starting with their casual promotion of abortion. It’s a complicated world, people focus on what they want to….
…or, one could simply say this:
President Obama was warned that if you take the Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs and work her to death, she will stop laying golden eggs. He doesn’t believe it.
Or, as Robert Heinlein wrote in one of his short stories, circa 1940: “Most liberals believe that water runs downhill, but praise God, it’ll never reach the bottom.”
(Let me point out, by the way, that I don’t think this problem is unique to liberals. It’s a human failing to want to ignore the ultimate consequences of our actions. I’m not convinced, as many seem to believe, that conservatives are more responsible than liberals. I think, rather, that the political desires of liberals are more open-ended, and thus more conducive to spiraling out of control. If a short-sighted man wants to expand government, he’ll want to keep on doing it forever… but if another short-sighted man wants to limit its growth, there’s a built-in boundary to his actions.)
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Occam:
Man’s wants are limitless, man’s resources limited.
Ergo, socialism cannot work.
Nicely put! But there’s more to it than that. Would a socialist state work if, in fact, it gave from each according to his needs, took from each according to his abilities, and maintained a balanced budget?
No, it would not… because by giving to everyone according to his need, we remove the incentive to strive. There’s a reason we saw relatively little true innovation come out of the Soviet Union. As the Soviets used to say, as long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work.
It’s a conceptual problem. A socialist economy sounds ideal, and it ought to work — everybody gets everything they need, and no one needs to worry anymore! But human beings become stagnant if they live forever in the comfort zone.
I’m reminded of the truism that a slave society can’t compete with a free one. On the face of it, this doesn’t make sense; wouldn’t a slave economy have the advantage, with a near-limitless supply of free labor? But again, this doesn’t take human nature into account. Slaves are human beings, and respond to human incentives. Force a man to work, and he will work as hard as he is forced to work, no harder. Let him work for himself, doing what he wants to do or what he feels he needs to do… and suddenly the sky’s the limit.
I’m reminded of another witticism, from a great American philosopher: “Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.”
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Liberals probably look at europeans and are certain we can be moulded into the same compliant bunch. And maybe it is doable. Except for that part where we’re descended from barefoot farmers who set the precedent on how it should turn out.
Daniel in Brookline Says:
August 8th, 2011 at 9:26 am
President Obama was warned that if you take the Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs and work her to death, she will stop laying golden eggs. He doesn’t believe it.
I’m not sure if Obama misunderstands the goose, or if he disapproves that golden eggs exist at all (except for his own use, of course).
…I’m not convinced, as many seem to believe, that conservatives are more responsible than liberals. I think, rather, that the political desires of liberals are more open-ended, and thus more conducive to spiraling out of control.
But if a nominally conservative government is controlled by a proselytizing universal religion…
(Great comment, Daniel. It helped me put my finger on why I’m uneasy about the crusading religious right even though I share many of their attitudes.)
Flashmobs in Philly and Milwaukee, and other cities.
We are one major spark away from conflagration.and chaos.
The social fabric and the social contract has been been breaking for years.
More and more I wonder if we really will survive Obama. It is not certain.
More and more I am thinking that prayer and taking care to prepare for bad times are the best way to go.
Hope and Change. How cruelly ironic.
War comes next…
Cause when your in a pool with bully sharks, they are not going to be nice when your down…
ALSO, an altercation guarantees the same idiots wont let go of the wheel… can you imagine wwii, with obama as commander in chief?
the problem is others can, and they like it…..
Flashmobs in Philly and Milwaukee, and other cities…
mike, you forgot to mention that they are targeting poor white males/jewish males (who are poor and white)… pulling people out of cars, assaulting children… and more… (while in other incidents even nuttier to each other)
i can list out over 30 incidents..
and the volk can do no harm, as in most cases, they are not prosecuting, and cant find them
(by the way, flashs mobs for robbery is directly out of a chinese movie starring jackie chan in california!!!! within a few months of that arriving here and on cable, came the wave of robberies using the same technique, knowing that the store owners cant have guns, and most are not jackie chan)
now Neal Boortz is paraphrasing artful…
I said, why would one vote for the antithetical to capitalism to improve capitalism… yes?
i said, would you hire a person who hates children and sexually abuses them, the antithesis of a nanny, to watch your kids? then why do so to the economy to improve it.
Turn around our economy? It’s not really that hard
Neal Boortz
actually the cake is in the oven still
wait till they open the door…
At least we won’t be bored, hungry and frightened maybe, but not bored.
This was an excellent article. I think that the Brits may also be getting tired of their Socialist masters.