Socialists Find Out When “Eventually” Is.

12 May, 2010 by John Hawkins

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“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. — Margaret Thatcher

Eventually is here for Greece. Here’s Dick Morris on what’s happening and the potential fall-out for the United States:

“Investors have gone from being nervous about small banks (the savings-and-loan crisis of the ’80s) to being nervous about big banks to being nervous about non-bank financial institutions to being nervous about small countries.

The next steps are obvious. The worry will spread to medium-sized countries like Italy and Britain, and then to the biggest of all: the United States.

Obama has left us vulnerable to these concerns with his huge and unnecessary budget deficit. With our debt now exceeding 80 percent of our GDP (it was 60 percent when Obama took office), we are hostage to speculators and nervous investors. In 2011, we may well experience the same kind of international jitters that now bedevil Greece and find our hand forced by an international consensus, just as Athens’ has been.”

Now, here’s Roger Samuelson:

What we’re seeing in Greece is the death spiral of the welfare state. This isn’t Greece’s problem alone, and that’s why its crisis has rattled global stock markets and threatens economic recovery. Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven’t fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies.

Americans dislike the term “welfare state” and substitute the bland word “entitlements.” The vocabulary doesn’t alter the reality. Countries cannot overspend and overborrow forever. By delaying hard decisions about spending and taxes, governments maneuver themselves into a cul de sac.

In a sane world, what’s happening in Greece would lead to the death rattle of liberalism/socialism/communism because what’s happening there is the long predicted “eventually.” As long as I’ve been writing about politics, conservatives have been saying, “We can’t keep spending like this. If we don’t get it under control, eventually it’s going to lead to disaster.”

Our ideological counterparts on the Left didn’t really believe it then and they don’t really believe it now. Somehow, some way, they believe we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars more than we have, every year, from now until the end of:  time, without ever : paying a terrible price for it. It sounds nonsensical, but it’s the policy of the United States of America and although the Democrats are bigger spenders, even Republicans haven’t had the will to fight them very hard. So, whether we have:  Republicans or Democrats in charge, government gets bigger, the deficit increases, and we add ever more government goodies that we’ve just gotta have.

If you’re waiting for the Left to see the error of:  its : ways, what’s happening in Greece should enlighten you: They’re in the streets, enraged that the rest of the world isn’t willing not just to bail them out, but to support their ridiculously generous benefits:

Greek workers on Wednesday called a 24-hour strike on May 19, the latest in a series of protests against planned pension cuts linked to an international 110-billion-euro ($139.7 billion) bailout for Greece.

Unionists have vowed to stop the pension reform, a key condition in a financial rescue plan for Greece agreed last week with the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

…”The IMF will not stop thirsting for workers’ blood,” said Yannis Panagopoulos, chairman of Greece’s main private sector labour union GSEE. “Its recipes are a disaster and the government must turn them down.”

Greek workers last went on strike on May 5, when protesters threw petrol bombs at a bank in Athens, killing three employees, in the worst violence the country saw since riots in 2008

Greece is bankrupt and close to defaulting on:  its : debts, yet the people keeping them afloat in exchange for guarantees that they’ll get their financial house in order are “thirsting for workers’ blood.” See, the bad guys aren’t the people who’ve put Greece in this condition, they’re the people bailing them out. It’s no different here. The bad guys are those awful rich people who pay the overwhelming majority of the income taxes and those terrible corporations who provide taxes and jobs. If it wasn’t for them, this would be the sort of glorious worker’s paradise that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest:  of:  the Democrats want the country to be.

Know where that kind of thinking leads?

Greece.

Unless we make some dramatic changes in this country, unpopular ones that are going to be universally opposed on the Left, eventually what’s happening to Greece is going to happen here — except it’ll be worse because no one’s big enough to bail us out.

Sooner or later, “eventually” is going to happen here. Unfortunately, given what’s going on in Greece, it may be “sooner.”