Universal Fraud

You thought good old America was in bad shape financially?  I did too, except in spite of the reckless spending and out of control increases in the size of government, Greece has us beat.  As a matter of fact, so do Portugal, Japan, Spain, and probably even Mother England.  How does this happen?  How can all these nations go down the tubes with unbearable, unpayable debts?  It’s really quite simple!

Politics and political actions are very similar in all so called ’free’ nations.  Only the language is different.  I don’t know the languages, but the modus operandi is the same everywhere, except in communist nations.  In communist nations, everyone is a slave to government and low wages are common, so we don’t want that.  The routine goes like this:  “We have too many poor people.  Let’s help them out.”  “We need free schools, so that everyone can have a good education.”  “Health care costs too much, and too many people can’t afford it.  Let’s make it affordable.”  “That nation is threatening us, let’s go to war and defeat them, and make them a democracy.”  “There are too many work related accidents.  Let’s police the workplace to make it safer.”  “There are frauds in the stock market.  Let’s police it and make if safe for investors.”  “People are getting injured in car accidents.  let’s make seat belts and air bags compulsory.”  “People riding motorcycles should wear helmets and glasses.  Let’s fine them if they don’t.”  “Farmers aren’t getting enough for their milk, cotton, wheat, oats, corn, beef, (take your choice and time period);  let’s set minimum prices for food items.”  “There’s too much being grown.  Let’s pay farmers not to grow things.”  “People need protection for retirement.  Let’s force them to pay into a government insurance plan, so they will be comfortable in their last years.”  “The ozone ring is threatening our health, let’s make Freon illegal.”  “We need to have a space station.”  “Let’s help poor people buy houses so they will have a home.”  “Let’s outlaw incandescent light bulbs.”  “Let’s make cars safer by outlawing fins and protruding things on their bodies.”  On and on, and on it can go, and has gone.  The one common denominator is that government can do nothing well or efficiently, and everything it does, steals from the haves, and gives it to the have nots, who will always multiply and want more.

 This process has gone on so long in all the so called ’free’ nations, that they’re mostly bankrupt.  Every time government spends, legislates, controls, regulates, licenses, subsidizes, and in a thousands other ways doesn’t mind its business, the nations go bankrupt.  Why?  Because government produces no wealth.  Not a dime’s worth.  Government consumes wealth, just like a hungry animal consumes food.  Government consumes wealth, like a leaky bucket loses water, or a hole in a boat causes it to sink.  If you punch a hold in a rowboat, it will sink pretty quickly, but if you punch a hole in an 85,000 ton cruise ship, it may take years to sink, assuming nothing is done to plug the leak or pump it out.

Picture the governments of Greece and the others, including America, as a huge cruise ship.  It sprung a leak years and decades ago, and it was so small, that it caused no concern. After all, there were bilge pumps to take out the water.  The leak caused rust to form, and the hull became weaker, and the hole became larger, but the pumps kept up, so not to worry.  The leaks could be compared to idiotic government actions, which at first seemed so smart and necessary.  When government took over a private sector, in the name of ’helping the needy’ usually, the cost seemed to be negligible at first.  After all, what’s a few dollars to a prosperous nation like America, Portugal, Britain, Spain, or Japan?  The poor needed help, needed a home, medical care, education, or whatever., so surely a rich nation can afford to help its downtrodden, can’t it?  No, as a matter of fact.

Eventually, cities began to decay.  What used to be poor neighborhoods, became slums.  Slums with rampant crime, abandoned cars, wrecked, abandoned houses, and filth.  White flight became common, suburbs prospered, and cities lost their transportation systems, tax base, beauty, livability, and prosperity.  Stores closed, downtowns ceased to be glorious shopping areas with large department stores, specialty shops, fine restaurants, and movie palaces.  Graffiti appeared, and was soon everywhere.  Former profitable transit lines went broke and were taken over by government, and operated at huge losses.  Everyone wondered how that could have possibly happened to Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit, or other large cities.  Where did all these nasty, mean, violent, criminals come from?  Didn’t we sell them houses with no down payments?  Didn’t we subsidize their utilities, and give them free schools?  How could the once marvelous cities decay so, when government did so much to help the poor, give them subsidies, schools, and medical care?  Maybe they just weren’t appreciative!

The routine continued, until it encompassed just about every facet of the citizen’s life.  Everyone was being protected, educated, and subsidized by government.  A Utopia come true? Politicians everywhere, be they in Japan, Portugal, or Greece, love the glory and virtual worship that comes with their office.   They love to see their faces and hear their voices on TV news programs.  It’s marvelous for them to have their votes praised and pictures taken.  “Oh Senator Snort, you have helped us so much!  My life is so much better, now that government is helping me.”  Politicians love to be re-elected, and what better way to do so, than to continually promise more from the public treasury?  Promise handouts, promise protection, promise regulation from those mean insurance companies, businesses, corporations, farmers, railroads, stock brokers, and every company, person, or entity which operates at a profit.  “Government doesn’t have to make a profit,” the politicos rant on, “so let non-profit government regulate, hand out, subsidize, and control you.” 

Around the world, politicians have bankrupted their nations, by spending and creating huge welfare states.  Welfare states, which cost so much, and once in place, can never be revoked, because of all the created dependents.  When you create a class of dependents on handouts from government, if they were removed, terrible hardships would be the result.  When anyone depends on something for nothing, the ’something’ cannot be removed, because the dependents on the ’somethings’ have forgotten how to get along without them.  When public schools were instituted a hundred years ago, parents forgot how to teach their kids, or be responsible for their educations.  Like a slow leak in an ocean liner, public schools have sunk to being a huge joke. When Medicare was legislated into existence in 1965, it wasn’t long until health care rates went up to pay for the paperwork, bureaucrats, fraud, and extra employees every doctor needed.  It wasn’t long, until people needing medical or doctor care, had forgotten what it was like to pay for what they needed.  Now, they have forgotten that prescriptions need to paid for, because government has instituted another ’program,’ to pay for them.  Naturally, prescription costs have escalated as a result.

Everything is subsidized everywhere, it seems.  Everyone gets checks from governments in Portugal, Spain, Greece, Britain, Japan, and America.  Huge bureaucracies have sprouted in these places like weeds in a garden, choking out the vegetables.  The costs are so high for all this education, protection, and subsidization, that there is not enough money to pay for it.  The welfare recipients have become a class of themselves, now known as the ’underclass,’ who usually don’t work, produce endless children who turn out exactly like them, eat at the public trough, and commit crime to keep themselves occupied.  They live in public housing, and try to destroy it as soon as possible, so that the taxpayers can rehabilitate it, or build new ones for them.  The underclass got started with FDR’s first public housing projects in 1937, and have multiplied endlessly ever since, with their occupants constantly demanding more and more ’help’ for their worthless selves.  It has happened in Greece, Japan, Portugal, Britain, Spain, and America.  Public housing, public schools, and nationalized health care is universal, (partially here), and none of it works, is even remotely efficient, and costs outrageous amounts of tax dollars.  Governments have bankrupted the purveyors of such, (America, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Greece, etc.) all voted into existence by their politicians.  Total bankruptcy is on the horizon.

What happens if the payments stop, because of the bankruptcy of those who are dishing out the freebies?  Riots?  Bloodshed?  Naturally.  Robberies?  Uncontrollable fires?  Mass hysteria?  Why not?  Remember the fires that broke out all over L.A. when the cops who arrested Rodney King, were declared innocent by a jury?  I know who was the fire commissioner at that time, and he says it was un-controllable.  Imagine the chaos in big cities, if the welfare payments stop, or are even slowed, down because of no money.  Would you like to be on the 80th floor of a New York high rise, if the electricity and water went off, and there was rioting in the streets below you, with fires being set?  I remember the North Philly riots, and my old shopping neighborhood in Washington D.C. being burned to the ground after Martin Luther King was shot.  I remember the Watts riots, and all of these were because of one incident, or in one location. Can you imagine what can come in all these nations if the payments stop?