All for Greece and Grief for All!
By Eric Blair
At first glance it seems ironic that Europe, long disdainful of American-style capitalism and haughtily proud of its womb-to-tomb smorgasbord of lavish government-managed goodies, should be tightening its various belts, while on this side of the big pond we continue to tinker with our economy to conjure up just the right mix of American-style socialism and the free market activity needed to support it. Meanwhile, our esteemed leader is lecturing the Europeans not to turn off the swag spigot too quickly. Socialist Europe is being scolded by an American president for not being sufficiently committed to socialism. Talk about irony!
The European countries are merely adjusting sooner because they’ve been shoveling the goodies into the public trough for longer, and with more shovels. It took one European state – Greece – to come begging, in order the awaken the others to their eventual fate.
Apparently that lesson is lost on some of us over here. Europe is backing away from the abyss while we continue to gallop toward it. Now we see, for example, the Brits raising the VAT and cutting back on the swag – or at least talking about it. (Raising the VAT won’t help the economy in the long run, but it makes the left-leaning parties feel better for now, and might just shut them up long enough to get something constructive done. At least Her Majesty’s Government have the other half of the recipe right.)
Greece is Europe’s canary in the coal mine; Europe is ours.
American-style capitalism has never been as, well, capitalistic (unfortunately) as the Europeans have traditionally thought. The Euros have just gone so much further along the continuum toward state socialism than we have that we’ve continued to look positively laissez faire (pardon my French).
The Europeans are in shabbier condition than we Yanks are because they’ve been toiling in the vineyards of Marxism for longer – with predictable, and predicted, results. Despite our own unemployment in double digits and our national debt a mighty thing to behold, compared to the Europeans we’re just a little worn in the elbows so far.
American admirers of European socialism should take note of the shape of things in Greece, Spain, et al. But they won’t. It should be obvious (but for some reason never is) that capitalism can survive and flourish without socialism, but socialism needs capitalism to pay the bills.
Margaret Thatcher said it: “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
Pan-Europeanism and the yearning for the Common Market, the common currency and the common everything else got its start as an effort to keep the European countries from going to war with each other, as they always have. No harm done on that front, although the whole thing comes apart as soon as Belgium gets too big for its britches (as if it hasn’t already) and the Germans invade – again.
Speaking of Germans, they’re not particularly keen on bailing out Greece – nor should they be. Greeks have made tax evasion a national sport, while still soaking up the pension and other benefits as if someone in their country were actually paying for it.
Turns out the other Europeans – Germans and Scandinavians, in particular – are paying Greece’s bills, since those countries have done a much better job of managing their economies (although how much better off their economies could be if they didn’t excel, too, at ladling out the swag, we may never know).
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Eric Blair writes about postcard printing and brochure printing for http://www.colorprintingcentral.com He also writes extensively about all manner of other things.
