One of the big news stories from the
Associated Press today ran with the headline quoted above. This development, of course, is shocking to liberals in the media, academia, and politics.
Perhaps more shocking—and frightening—to liberals is this: “Europe's problems are dragging down the entire global economy… as well as President Barack Obama's election prospects.”
The good news is, anybody with half a brain (and fortunately, even with half a brain, you’re smarter than the average liberal), understands exactly why The Eurozone is in its current mess. In fact, the author of this piece, Sarah DiLorenzo, even hit on the core of this problem further in the article:
“While austerity measures were introduced to ease the financial crisis by lowering public debt, they are also slowing down economies as government spending drops off. This is also pushing unemployment higher and threatening the continent with recession.”
Here’s the half a brain part: do you see the problem here? For those liberals reading this, I’ll explain: for decades, Eurozone governments have propped up their socialist economies with government spending. As we all (and of course, again, by “we all” I mean those with at least half a brain) know, a free economy will always outperform a government-regulated economy. Free people working in their own best interests and with highly specialized knowledge create a more vibrant business culture than those who are forced to work under some government planning scheme or under heavy government regulation.
If you need evidence of this, all you have to do is look at what happens every time a government lowers taxes, reduces regulation, and gets out of the way of its own people. The economy flourishes.
But socialists HATE this fact, because it means they’re not needed to make society the perfect place they want it to be. So they hide this fact any way they can. In the former Soviet Union, the government simply lied through their state-run propaganda newspaper, Pravda (ironically enough, the Russian term for “truth”) about how strong their economy was.
Today, since today’s socialist governments don’t have total control of their media outlets, they hide socialism’s inherent economic weaknesses by bolstering their economies with government spending. This spending can artificially raise total economic output to levels similar to those of non-socialist economics. Then these governments can point at their economic numbers and say, “See, our system works as well as yours.”
But of course, this can’t last forever. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, among others, proved the Soviet Union’s lies by bankrupting its weak economy in an arms race. Since Reagan governed over a free economy, he had far more financial resources to spend on military arms. When the Soviets tried to keep up, their failed socialist economy crashed.
Since we’re not in a Cold War with the Eurozone, we can’t prove the weakness of their artificially propped-up economies in this way. Plus, our current socialist-in-chief actually agrees with the Eurocrats, so he wouldn’t try, anyway.
But still, economic reality eventually catches up to people. We don’t have to spend the Europeans into oblivion; they’ve done it themselves.
See, this artificial economic inflation can only go on so long, before the government simply runs out of money. We’ve seen this throughout the Eurozone, in countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Cyprus, Malta and Portugal. Then you have a REAL problem, because you now have an economy based largely on government spending, but the government has no more money to spend. That’s a real tough place to be, isn’t it?
Of course, many liberal “experts” simply never learn, and they think the answer is to, as the author of the AP article noted, “loosen spending to encourage growth.” Apparently these experts think that money just magically appears on the socialism tree. Those in power in these countries, however, have to deal with the fact that there is simply no more money for such luxuries. Greece is already meeting its basic budgetary needs with money borrowed from other European countries.
Fortunately, some are learning from their mistakes: “Other countries are also pushing through reforms that are designed to free up the labor market by breaking down restrictive practices and making it easier for companies to hire and fire workers.” Or we could reword that to simply say, “Other countries have realized the inherent stupidity of socialism, and are adopting free-market policies to get out of the mess.”
The problem is, after decades of telling their populations that socialism is the answer to their problems, these leaders are finding it a hard sell to wean people off of the government largesse. According to DiLorenzo, “However, with no end in sight to austerity or high unemployment, there are doubts that governments will be able to stay the course in the face of widespread popular protests.” How’s that for a Catch-22? There’s no more money to fund the lie, but when governments try to cut spending and convert to a freer society, the people head to the streets to protest.
It will be interesting to see how things play out in the Eurozone. It could also be educational for American political leaders, if they were actually interested in being educated on such things. I doubt they are. That being the case, the rest of us should at least pay attention to how things play out in Europe, just so we can have an idea where we will be in a few years. I’m getting my protest paraphernalia in order so I’ll be ready to hit the streets.
Mike Jensen——
Bio and Archives
Mike Jensen is a freelance writer living in Colorado. He received his M.A. in Professional Writing from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he wrote his first book, Alaska’s Wilderness Highway. He has since published Skier’s Guide to Utah along with humor, travel, and political articles for various magazines and newspapers. He is married with five sons, and spends his free time at a remote cabin in the Colorado Rockies.
