Pundits speculate that a Greek default may send the United States into another recession. A default is more likely to be a convenient external scapegoat than an actual cause. The Greek debt stands at about a half-trillion dollars. U.S. debt approaches $15 trillion. Greece isn’t too big to fail. The U.S. is too big to bailout. The weight of America’s enormous debt rather than the weight of another country’s enormous debt is the greater obstacle to U.S. growth. Greece is the warning of an iceberg ahead. It isn’t the actual iceberg, at least for the United States. Its creditors are another matter, and leaving them holding the bag, or forcing foreign taxpayers to bail them out, will have negative repercussions well beyond Greece.
On Sunday, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou turned back from a trip to the United States so that he could hold an emergency meeting with his cabinet. When will the United States turn back from its trip to Greece?
Like Greece, the U.S. has seen its debt eclipse its gross domestic product. Like Greece, the United States has seen its credit downgraded. Like Greece, the United States has seen its president vaguely talk budget cuts, but offer concrete tax hikes. And like Greece, the United States has de facto defaulted: the former by depending upon others to service its debts; the latter, by devaluing its money through currency creation to purchase its own debt.
Greece’s crisis is a crisis of socialism. The public sector gobbles up 40 percent of gross domestic product. The state employs about one million of the eleven million citizens. Greece offers its people complimentary eye exams, college tuition, and child care. Despite the giveaways, and the contracting economy, the Mediterranean nation has embraced tax hikes as the primary means to escape the debt disaster. Several increases to the value added tax, surcharges to purchases of alcohol, a nationwide property tax, and an onerous levy on the wealthy are among the hikes instituted in the last two years. In the face of an economy going in the wrong direction and a borrowing debacle that threatens future borrowing, Greeks still don’t want to pay for what the government has been giving them. A freeloading state has bred a freeloading citizenry. So the protests of Greek leaders, like the street protests of Greek citizens, reek of an entitlement to money that isn’t theirs.
Ancient Greece was conquered by Rome. Modern Greece was conquered by socialism.
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Greece is the canary in the coalmine…trying to warn us all of the disastrous fruits of socialism. Quite obviously, the White House isn't listening.
Lets see if those tax hikes in Greece turn things around. Surely it will work here in the States. Obama and his gang want to raise taxes because they hate the rich, not because they think it will raise revenue. Its been shown over and over again that raising taxes past a certain amount does not raise revenue, it decreases it, but who cares when your on a crusade to right "wrongs".
It makes me cringe to hear the President say he wants to raise taxes on "Millionaires and Billionaires" as if they are one in the same. There is a HUGE difference between the two. It sounds like a little kid talking about his unopened piggy bank. He can get his new bike if he breaks it with a hammer. Ask him how much is in there and while shaking the coins around in it he'll tell you "Millions and Billions!"
Seriously, how long do we have? As it is, I live paycheck to paycheck and prices rise insidiously across the board with no pay hike. Lost equity in my home, essentially a “fixed” income with steadily increasing costs. Even if I work until I drop…how long do we have?
Democrats use the same canard over and over again. "We will fix the problem by raising taxes on the wealthiest of americans" The same quote was used by Carter, Clinton, Obama, Rosovelt. But here is what always happens: After they realize the numbers don't add up for the "wealthiest of Americans" to fund their socialist pipe dreams they are forced to raise taxes on everyone This is always what happens because there are just not enough "wealthy" people to fund these programs. Clinton raised taxes on families of four making $30,000. I guess that is what they consider wealthy.
2400 years ago democratic Athens put to death their wisest man because he pointed out that only rule by the wisest would save the state. Socialism is popular only because demagogues promise to take wealth from the wealthy and distribute it. The economy collapses when they run out of bribe money. Then you have crises and "unrest." It's as inevitable as the sun rising in the east.
Greece is not being ruled by philosophers. Nor is the EU. Or the United States.
As Margaret Thatcher rightly pointed out "the problem with socialism is that you always run out of other peoples money." They went on a spending spree, now it's time to pay the check. It's going to be fun to watch the socialist system crash and burn.
In the Unites States it is the leftists employing Cloward-Piven Strategy with the goal to create a groundswell of demands for public services to overwhelm government, create crisis and usher in a widespread call for fundamental economic reform at the federal level, with socialism the ultimate goal. Cloward and Piven focused on welfare, voting, housing and immigration “rights,” but leftist positions on any issue, whether championing equal “rights,” abortion “rights,” education “rights,” rights to health care, housing, legal protections of antisocial or even criminal behavior, to the point of absurdity, are intentionally divisive. They add new fiscal and regulatory burdens on government, and set new precedents that undermine the limited government concepts embedded in our Constitution, while conferring discriminatory special benefits on legally defined groups the rest of us are forced to pay for. They deliberately put our society at war with itself. And as Cloward and Piven made clear, the true purpose is not even to help those groups, but rather to duplicitously enlist them as part of an offensive to collapse our society from within!