2Taboos.com: Once the genie is out of the bottle, can it be put back in?

2Taboos

Politics & Religion

2Taboos.com: Once the genie is out of the bottle, can it be put back in?

Once the genie is out of the bottle, can it be put back in?

The recent controversy with the Greek bailout and the recent budget battle in Washington makes me wonder if it is even possible to cut back the government once it grows too large. Socialism is all about class warfare. The political elitist use class envy to create controversy and strife. In a democratic society, this technique has worked well to get unscrupulous politicians elected. Once elected, it is a simple thing to keep giving away the public treasury in order to maintain or improve their power.

The more money and benefits they give away, the more they need to take from the economy to maintain their power. It is like a drug addict, only in this case it is the electoral body that becomes immune to the entitlements they have already received and increasingly demands more and more to keep them satiated enough to provide the political elitist with enough votes to stay in office.

Like any drug or parasitic organism, this continues until the the body (economy, society) is too weak to fight off the disease and succumbs to death. What I find puzzling is that the majority of people today seem drunk on the Circean poison of Socialism. History has shown time and time again that socialism has not found away to align their utopian ideals with the basic facts of human nature. Don't believe me? Then show me; where are all the Hippie communes of the 60's? Where did these simple children of nature go? Many of them are in Universities making comfortable 6 figure salaries and generous pensions while the middle-class goes broke trying to get their sons and daughters a college degree. Many more are in politics making a very good living dishing out government candy at our expense.

The problem is that the more we the people become dependent on them the government, the less free we are. In Greece the government is the number 1 employer. On top of that the government was in the business of handing out very generous social benefits for it's citizens. This was fine as long as the cheap credit kept flowing. But eventually the economy slows like it always does. Eventually you become a credit risk and the cost of your borrowing increases, which takes more from your resources, which causes you to increase borrowing in a death spiral that normally ends in a crash.

But when you are stuck in the credit trap it is extremely hard to get out. For an individual, it means a drastic downgrade in your lifestyle. For a society, it means many people must downgrade their lifestyle so that the government can live within it's means. And that is the rub. Voters may want the government to control spending, but they don't want to give up any of their benefits. In Greece we have seen the affect of government austerity programs; protests, riots, threats against the political elitist. Which usually means defeat at the polls.

In the U.S. we saw how every special interest group in the country came out to defend their piece of the government pie. Senior citizens don't want to see a cut in their retirement benefits or Medicare so we can't cut those programs. People who are close to retirement do not want to see the age of retirement raised before they can get their share. Government employees do not want to give up any of their generous wages or benefits. Politicians will not give up any of their perks and benefits. Welfare people do not want to give up any of their benefits. Corporations say they need government assistance in order to grow and compete. Defense contractors do not want to take a cut in their lucrative livelihood. Universities do not want to give up their government grants. State and local government do not want to reduce their federal assistance programs. Politician want to protect special funding that go to their districts.

So why everyone knows things need to change, no one is willing to give up their candy. And the politicians make token cuts that are not really cuts and kick the can down the street for another generation until the whole thing collapses.

-- Thomas Paine 2