Our own Greek tragedy by Mark Steyn
Mike
STEYN: Our own Greek tragedy
Mark Steyn
While President Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new,
even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care "summit,"
thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable
network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split screen -
because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a
little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe
is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can
still pull for shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do
is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of
unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter 20 (total
societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter 17 or 18.
What's happening in the developed world today isn't so very hard to
understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of
people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in
Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are screwing over our
kids and grandkids. In Europe, they've reached the next stage in
social democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw
over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1, or just
over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: 10
grandparents have six kids have four grandkids - i.e., the family tree
is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 "lowest-low" fertility - the
point from which no society has ever recovered. And compared to Spain
and Italy, Greece has the least worst fertility rate in Mediterranean
Europe.
So you can't borrow against the future because, in the most basic
sense, you don't have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58,
which sounds great. But, when 10 grandparents have four grandchildren,
who pays for you to spend the last third of your adult life loafing
around?
By the way, you don't have to go to Greece to experience Greek-style
retirement: The Athenian "public service" of California has been
metaphorically face-down in the ouzo for a generation. Still, America
as a whole is not yet Greece. A couple of years ago, when I wrote my
book "America Alone," I put the Social Security debate in a bit of
perspective: On 2005 figures, projected public pensions liabilities
were expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8 percent of GDP. In Greece,
the figure was 25 percent. In other words, head for the hills,
Armageddon, outta here, The End. Since then, the situation has
worsened in both countries. And really the comparison is academic:
Whereas America still has a choice, Greece isn't going to have a 2040
- not without a massive shot of Reality Juice.
Is that likely to happen? At such moments, I like to modify Gerald
Ford. When seeking to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences,
President Ford liked to say: "A government big enough to give you
everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have."
Which is true enough. But there's an intermediate stage: A government
big enough to give you everything you want isn't big enough to get you
to give any of it back. That's the point Greece is at. Its socialist
government has been forced into supporting a package of austerity
measures. The Greek people's response is: Nuts to that. Public sector
workers have succeeded in redefining time itself: Every year, they
receive 14 monthly payments. You do the math. And for about seven
months' work - for many of them the workday ends at 2:30 p.m. When
they retire, they get 14 monthly pension payments. In other words:
Economic reality is not my problem. I want my benefits. And, if it
bankrupts the entire state a generation from now, who cares as long as
they keep the checks coming until I croak?
We hard-hearted, small-government guys are often damned as selfish
types who care nothing for the general welfare. But, as the Greek
protests make plain, nothing makes an individual more selfish than the
socially equitable communitarianism of big government. Once a chap's
enjoying the fruits of government health care, government-paid
vacation, government-funded early retirement, and all the rest, he
couldn't give a hoot about the general societal interest. He's got
his, and to hell with everyone else. People's sense of entitlement
endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense.
The perfect spokesman for the entitlement mentality is the deputy
prime minister of Greece. The European Union has concluded that the
Greek government's austerity measures are insufficient and, as a
condition of bailout, has demanded something more robust. Greece is no
longer a sovereign state: It's General Motors, and the EU is
Washington, and the Greek electorate is happy to play the part of the
United Auto Workers - everything's on the table except anything that
would actually make a difference. In practice, because Spain,
Portugal, Italy and Ireland are also on the brink of the abyss, a
"European" bailout will be paid for by Germany. So the aforementioned
Greek deputy prime minister, Theodoros Pangalos, has denounced the
conditions of the EU deal on the grounds that the Germans stole all
the bullion from the Bank of Greece during the Second World War.
Welfare always breeds contempt, in nations as much as inner-city
housing projects. How dare you tell us how to live! Just give us your
money and push off.
Unfortunately, Germany is no longer an economic powerhouse. As Angela
Merkel pointed out a year ago, for Germany, an Obama-sized stimulus
was out of the question simply because its foreign creditors know
there are not enough young Germans around ever to repay it. Over 30
percent of German women are childless; among German university
graduates, it's over 40 percent. And for the ever dwindling band of
young Germans who make it out of the maternity ward, there's precious
little reason to stick around. Why be the last handsome blond
lederhosen-clad Aryan lad working the late shift at the beer garden in
order to prop up singlehandedly entire retirement homes? And that's
before the EU decides to add the Greeks to your burdens. Germans, who
retire at 67, are now expected to sustain the unsustainable 14 monthly
payments per year for Greeks who retire at 58.
Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt
bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by
an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one
of the less profligate, still just about functioning corners of
America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn't
pay. You'll wind up bailing out anyway. The problem is there are never
enough of "the rich" to fund the entitlement state, because in the
end, it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-
reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the
fertility rate. In Greece, they've run out Greeks, so they'll stick it
to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have
only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they
stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America President
Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are saying we need to paddle faster
to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?
Mark Steyn is the author of the New York Times best-seller "America
Alone" (Regnery, 2006).
Michael Coburn
> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/26/our-own-greek-tragedy/
>
> STEYN: Our own Greek tragedy
>
> Mark Steyn
>
> While President Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even
> more unsustainable entitlement at the health care "summit," thousands of
> Greeks took to the streets to riot.
And my cat was casing mouses and the sun was shining and too much CO2 was
being blasted into the air. And none of these things had any direct
relationship to one another.
> An enterprising cable network might
> have shown the two scenes on a continuous split screen - because they're
> part of the same story.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!
> It's just that Greece is a little further along
> in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge
> over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for
> shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with
> the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable
> entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter 20 (total societal collapse):
> The Greeks are at Chapter 17 or 18.
The nation of Greece, like the state of California does not have the
option of creating its own money and setting its own interest rates. The
United States government _DOES_.
One wonders if the rightarded will ever accept that fact. The amount of
US financial wealth in this universe is the amount of dollars spent by
the US government and as yet not reclaimed by taxation. And that is true
to the very last penny. Neither Greece nor California can create fiat
money and are forced to use money controlled by others.
<<<<<<<<<< remaining stupidity deleted >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
--
"Senate rules don't trump the Constitution" -- http://GreaterVoice.org/60