Greco Vindication

Advocates for free markets and free societies have had little to celebrate lately. If one was intentionally trying to stifle growth and destroy the creative power of free people, you’d follow the Team Obama playbook. The hollow promises of new goodies and handouts, the tacit refusal to address the broken and burdensome old entitlements, and the wholesale attempt to micro-manage individual citizens’ economic well-being from cradle to the grave smacks of arrogance and neglect. What reprieve do we have?

While individuals and families day-to-day take austere measures to make ends meet, the government grows ever larger, promising more and more. The dirty secret is that everything government gives, it must forcibly take away from some one else. So as the promises of cheap healthcare and rich retirements grow, so does the consumption of everyone else’s wealth. We used to live in a nation where we would demand our productive citizens to subsidize the unproductive, regardless of whether they actually need it or are reaping the harvest of laziness and irresponsibility. Now we ask our productive citizens, their children, and grandchildren to bear the burdensome costs. What have we become?

Perhaps a more pointed is question is, “what will we become?” The answer lies across the sea. As Europe reels from suffocating budget problems, back-breaking debt, and unfunded liabilities we are offered a chance to peer into the geo-political crystal ball and gaze into the future of our very own United States. Do you like what you see in Greece? Riots, murder, unrest, vandalism, and general violence don’t appeal to me.

Rest assured, the Greek plight threatening the European Union did not come about from taxes too low, a welfare state too small, or the even the lack of audacity to hope for change you can believe in. It happened when government stopped being an entity to protect your rights and property, and became a hand to deliver, “what the people want” (or in their case what the union/government worker/welfare classes want). Humans have unlimited wants but are faced with the harsh reality of limited resources. Only governments (with their power to forcefully wrest wealth away from those who produce it) can evade this basic tautology for so long. Limited government isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity. Any government that ceases to limit itself devours its only source of life: wealth-producing taxpayers.

For decades the thinkers, economists, and political leaders I look up to have been warning any one who would listen: we are on an unsustainable trajectory. The deficits and malignant growth of government we see in the U.S. does not lag far behind that of troubled Europe. We cannot sooner get out of debt by borrowing than you could stand with both feet in a bucket and lift yourself up. Just look at Greece drowning in a pool of their own decadence and profligacy, desperately clawing at their European peers, hoping to be saved.

Somehow the taunting words, “I told you so” just don’t seem to capture the moment.

As horrifying as it is to watch, we are vindicated by the malaise in Greece and Europe. If ever a “third-way” or pseudo-socialist society existed it is most of Europe. And as the European Union gasps for air, will we ignore the lesson we can learn from their suffering?