Wisdom from The Action Wisdom In Action

When Responsibility Doesn't Pay

From National Review Online.

"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."

...

"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 ten 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."

...

"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."

...

"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."

How many women of child-bearing age DON'T have kids in this country? Last I heard, it was somewhere around 30%--they won't have grandkids to stick it to, either...just like me. The ungodly tax situation in Europe is EXACTLY WHY they have declining birth rates, even negative ones in the northern European countries (and their governments offer incentives to have kids). Along with negative birth rates, they also have rising rates of alcoholism--is shows a lack of hope for the future. They've given up.

Posted by Cute at 8:56 PM

Labels: politics