Here are several news items that appeared on the internet recently:
BBC.com reported: Spanish unemployment has hit a new record high, official figures have shown. The number of unemployed people reached 5,639,500 at the end of March, with the unemployment rate hitting 24.4%, the national statistics agency said. (Note: 24.4% was a depression-era unemployment level here in the US)
Reuters reported: France's Socialist presidential frontrunner Francois Hollande (Note: Hollande won the presidency on May 6) said … he was expecting a wave of lay-offs to follow next weekend's election, but pledged his government would not stand idly by as companies dismissed their workers. …Hollande said labor leaders were warning that companies were preparing a round of job cuts after the end of the presidential campaign, during which Sarkozy has done everything in his power to avoid high profile industrial closures.
Reuters reported: On Monday, a 38-year-old geology lecturer hanged himself from a lamp post in Athens and on the same day a 35-year-old priest jumped to his death off his balcony in northern Greece. On Wednesday, a 23-year-old student shot himself in the head. In a country that has had one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, a surge in the number of suicides in the wake of an economic crisis has shocked and gripped the Mediterranean nation – and its media – before a May 6 election.
OK, so what do these stories mean when taken together?
Well, first, these Euro nations are all very, very socialistic.
Woah, woah, woah!! Isn’t socialism supposed to produce utopia? How could a socialist nation like Spain, the most far left in Europe, have such high unemployment and so much misery? How about Greece? And France?
Answer: Because socialism never produces utopia unless it is a fake utopia sustained by debt spending, or by someone else paying the bills. Socialist utopia is like a drug ‘high’. When it wears off the situation is much worse than ever.
Look at what Reuters also reported about Greece: Dimitris Nikolopoulos, a 37-year-old salesman, laughed at the idea that the suicide rate was so low because Greeks are well-adjusted and a generally happy people. "Greeks used to be very happy people because we were living off money that didn't belong to us," he said with a wry smile. "But sometimes you have to face reality. It wasn't our money."
Yes, indeed, it wasn’t their money. It was all debt spending. Greece has had a massive debt level for years and years. The money that the government was spending on public pensions, for instance, did not exist except as debt on the government ledgers.
That is precisely why highly-indebted Spain is suffering. And why France is suffering. And why highly-indebted socialistic Japan has had two economic “lost decades”. And why socialism and communism always, always, always produce unhappiness and unemployment contrary to the myth of happy workers.
And America today is piling up debt like never before. And this eventually will come crashing down. It already has in many ways.
Think of your own life: Would you rather have a lot of debt or no debt?
Obviously you would prefer none, because debt destroys people families, businesses and nations, right?
Indeed. Because in the long run socialism is unsustainable because, as the old saying goes, “The big problem with socialism is that you always run out of other people’s money…” And then the ensuing debt ruins the whole economy.
Meanwhile liberals always blame American debt on our military spending. Yet Euro military spending is only about one-quarter of US spending per capita and Euros have historically had much higher debt loads than the US.
Look at the story about France warning about layoffs. Why are layoffs coming in private French industry?
Answer: Because private companies are suffering and must shed workers. Yet under much of Euro-socialism companies have not been allowed to fire workers once hired. Therefore:
A) companies don’t hire workers in the first place, leading to high unemployment; and
B) the unnecessary workers on a company’s payroll often cause the company to slowly collapse because its wealth is being drained away. This leaves the company with no capital for more productive investment like new machinery or new product development that could earn it healthy profits and keep it thriving.
This ultimately all leads to more unemployment. That is why all socialist nations have high rates of unemployment and low growth and consequent economic problems. And that is why Europe can never help the suffering world economy – because it is socialistic and as a result is suffering itself.
If those French companies had been allowed to hire and fire as they please in a capitalist free market, unemployment would be much lower because more companies would be thriving and more people would be willing to start companies.
But government rules make the economy very unresponsive and people are afraid to take any risk by starting companies. Because they know that the government will tell them how to run their companies. That is why millions of Europeans have fled to America over the last 50 years.
Look at how the socialistic labor unions in America killed millions of jobs during the post-World War II era with outrageous wage demands, strikes and ridiculous work rules. Entire industries like steel and railroads were ruined because of the leftist mantra that the worker comes first and the company is an afterthought.
Meanwhile today the non-union “transplant” auto factories in the American South (Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai etc.) are prospering and stable and their workers have intentionally voted against unionization. Meanwhile Obama had to bail out unionized General Motors and Chrysler using YOUR tax dollars. It was nothing but a bailout of the unions.
Now imagine that you are a worker in a socialist nation and you know that your company could never fire you.
Many people would obviously slack off and do little or no work. Because there would be no penalty. This is another reason socialism always collapses.
This is like the public schoolteachers that you read about all over America who are accused of all sorts of misconduct, often with their students. Many still are on the public payroll and will receive full pensions. Because under socialism workers are always protected no matter what.
Look at this, also from Reuters about France: The prospect of a Socialist winning control of France for the first time since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1995 has irked some investors, helping to widen the spread of French bond yields to benchmark German Bunds.
So there you go. The prospect of socialism turns investors away. This is yet another downside of socialism. Therefore how can socialism be good for all the people?
It can’t. Socialism is a system that benefits only an unproductive minority (labor unions, government workers, welfare recipients etc.) while the general population suffers with high unemployment and hopelessness.
By the way much of European socialism in the last 60 years was financed by… the United States.
Yes, indeed, as America spent trillions to defend Europe from Soviet communism European nations slashed their defense budgets and funneled that money into their welfare states.
Secondly Europe never paid us back for financing the reconstruction of Europe after World War II under the Marshall Plan. They spent all that money on the welfare states too.
Gee, couldn’t the US use about $10 trillion right now?
Yes, but there is no way we will ever get it. Because socialism has spent all the money and thwarted European economies.
Gee, isn’t socialism supposed to create utopia?
Yes it does. For a minority of people.
Notice what else Reuters reported about the suicides in Greece: Some medical experts say this form of political suicide is a reflection of the growing despair and sense of helplessness many feel. But others warn the media may be amplifying the crisis mood with its coverage and numbers may only be up slightly.
Thus the left-wing Greek media are surely playing up the suicides in order to make it appear that the government must spend more money to help the people.
This is baloney. They government should and must spend much less money in order to get the economy on track. Otherwise things will only get worse than socialism already has made them.