All parties must come to an end. So seems to be the case in Europe and America these days. Most of the Europeans appear to be in deep denial about this, as are at least 45% of Americans. The Telegraph’s Janet Daley illustrates the contrast:
Last week’s Republican national convention sharpened what had been until then only a vague, inchoate theme: this campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.
The comments on the column, from what one would assume are mostly British residents, will provide tremendous insight for future historians about how deeply in denial about the current dismal fiscal situation their country is truly in. In fairness, one can’t reasonably argue that most Canadians would be any more intelligent.
The coming depression is going to make the last one look like a fad diet.
Pretty sure Canada will be fine. The more I think about it the more convinced I become that the coming crisis in our healthcare system is self correcting. As long as the rationing continues that is.
Oh, WE’LL be fine, for the most part. And that is the reason why the rest of the world is going to be beating a path to our door (well, more than usual). The question will be: what then?
Umm, denial? 😉
I agree though most of Canada will be fine, however, I don’t have the same feeling for GTA and the Vancouver area though. Those areas will implode just as fast as the LA and NYC areas here in the states will. Many will die. It will get very ugly once the parasites figure out the host is dead.
Ok ok let me qualify this. Baby boomers will come to realize what a scam “free healthcare” really is but it will be way too late. Younger people like me will be fine.
james at 11:55 AM,
Why mention the Boomers?
Could it be that you are blaming the Boomers for something their parents generation did?
In 1957, the majority Liberal government under Louis St. Laurent passed the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act to fund 50% of the cost of such programs for any provincial government that adopted them. The HIDS Act outlined five conditions: public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability, and accessibility. These remain the pillars of the Canada Health Act.
Lester B. Pearson introduced the Medical Care Act in 1966 that extended the HIDS Act cost-sharing to allow each province to establish a universal health care plan -an initiative that was drafted and initiated by the Liberal party and supported by the New Democratic Party (NDP).
Read true history, because it’s true and better than revisionist grievances.
I believe that when the crash comes the media that promoted the lies and hid the truth will be razed to the ground. Real violence will be visited on the purveyors. They had better be afraid. What type of behaviours would we expect from society when all that’s taught and reported is that we deserve more from government and less from ourselves?
James:
I’m a baby boomer and I’ve known for a long time that utopian socialism is a scam.
My parents came to this country to get away from it.
I’m said boomers because they are the ones who are about to need a massive amount of healthcare. I don’t blame them for believing the fairy tales. I’m just saying they will be the first ones to find out it was all a scam and it will be too late.
One of these days the grain ships will no longer be coming from Egypt to Rome to feed the mob at the circuses.
What is most galling is that the people who rail against “capitalism” usually mean materialism or excessive consumerism, or just plain greed.
Superb piece by Daley. This discussion isn’t really happening in Canada because the country, or at least parts of it, are still sufficiently rich to paper things over. But the cracks are showing, particularly in Ontario, and it will happen here as well.
There’s only one dimension that Daley missed. Capitalism can’t support democratic socialism because democratic socialism has imposed such an enormous regulatory burden that capitalism can’t generate economic growth of 6-9 per cent any more. Essentially the socialists sawed off the branch on which they were sitting.
Ultimately if nothing is done, Daley is right and nature will solve the problem either by destroying the economy through ruining the currency or by authoritarianism. Given their lead time, we will get to watch how this experiment proceeds in Europe.
“will come to realize what a scam “free healthcare” really is but it will be way too late”
Boomers are far more aware of these issues than younger people – they have to be, although I certainly can’t speak for your parents or any other boomers you know. Belief in fairy tales is not a weakness of older people; it’s more the pastime of mean spirited little pukes engaged in wishful thinking.
cgh – socialism is, by definition, never democratic. It inserts the will of an oligarchy over the people and manipulates the people by propaganda, by dividing them into identity blocs and bribing them, by dividing these identity blocs in adversarial hostilities towards each other, etc.
Daley wrote: “free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect”
But a universal entitlement doesn’t function within a free market, for a free market enables the entitlement to be competitively priced in that market. A universal entitlement is removed from free market pricing competition and becomes increasingly more expensive as its membership grows and as these members demand more benefits.
However, once a population is no longer organized within a tribal mode where its members are looked after by kin groups and has moved into a CIVIC mode, then the community becomes responsible for the care of the weaker members of the society. This can be done by church and charity, or it can be done also by government.
BUT, if it’s done by government this does not means socialism, for the programs can still operate within a competitive free market. That’s exactly how Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan operates. It’s run by the government and insurance companies via the free market competition.
And what does ‘social democracy’ mean?
“The capitalist engine can no longer…”
Robert, I think this is a title to your posts, that you’ll find has some legs..
I really enjoyed that column. It takes guts to write a column like that in politically-correct social-democratic Europe. And the column is true.
Once social entitlements are enacted, they can never be scaled back, because governments fear their survival and social unrest when doing so.
And there is never any limit to what people will feel they are entitled to. Hence students in Quebec demanding free university education. Once that is attained, they will move on to the next socialist entitlement.
@scf – This is crux of it: once these programs start they can’t be ended. The Americans plan is pretty clear: inflate the crap out of the dollar. That might work for awhile but only to delay the inevitable – the day when there is no money to pay the entitlements. Then all hell will break loose…
Mit should rethink his Mass. mandate health plan.
No one can kick the can down the road anymore. The road has lead to a wall. No more room left to pass it on.
ET, democratic socialism is what the phenomenon is called, as opposed to communism which is overtly authoritarian in nature. The terms as you note are contradictory, because the union of the two is contradictory. The difference is that communism is state-planned economy, while so-called democratic socialism relies on capitalism as the economic engine, something which classic communism thoroughly reviles.
The problem is that through the host of government regulations, democratic socialism slides into authoritarian communism sooner or later under the burden of government regulation and diktats, or it collapses economically under costs it cannot sustain.
This is the point of what’s going on in Europe: collapse or authoritarianism. Communism collapsed under the ineptness of state economic planning. So-called democratic socialism is collapsing the same way. It simply lasted longer because capitalism was so efficient in generating surplus wealth.
A good start would be to de-fund and shut down the UN.
cgh @ 6:52, that is exactly what Hayek was talking about in The Road to Serfdom.
Ken, exactly. What makes it fail is the internal contradiction. Socialism, if you follow Marx, is incompatible with capitalism. I would put it a different way than Karl. Socialism is a sort of inverse Midas Syndrome. Everything it touches turns to faeces.
cgh, many thanks. A perfect explanation.
Great article. And I love this website. Keep up the great work.
I once lived in Turkey. On one occasion I gave a turk (female) a pair of 501 jeans. After several minutes of crying she told me how much it would cost her to buy the real ones on the turkish economy.
My point?
I never heard of a poor American balling his/her brains out after recieving a $15 pair of jeans…
ET, you are most welcome. Your original comment was helpful to sharpen the distinction. Socialism comes in several different varieties and it’s important to try to distinguish the different types because they tend to have different failure modes.
Authoritarianism does not necessarily fail by itself. There are and have been a number of states where it has succeeded economically to some degree. Two examples come to mind, Pinochet’s Chile and modern China. I know they call themselves the Communist Party, but it’s become very clear that unlike Marx’s famous formula of To Each What He Needs, etc., the Chinese government only doles out what it deems it can afford. Whatever it is, it ain’t socialism. It’s much more in common with the social methods and policies of the Roman Empire.
I am another boomer. There is no doubt in my mind that my generation knew full well what was happening when debt was piled on to pay for our consumption of social benefits. Our parents might have brought these programs in but I cut them slack because they suffered a depression and fought a war which benefited us more than them.
The willingness by my generation to willfully saddle the next generation with this collosal debt is unforgiveable. We can witness how this was done by watching the USA November election. Unsustainable promises are again being made. You could make the case that some of these politicans are national security risks.
I am, as a good Canadian, a conseervative. You have to conserve to survive our winters. Other than Ron Paul I have not seen any politican prepared to talk about the real issues facing not just the USA but most world governments as debt deleveraging accelerates. Another opportunity will be lost as even if Romney is elected he will probably fold under the demand for ‘help’.