Is the EU’s failure a macrocosm of America’s welfare state?

Everyone—except the Germans—are demanding Germany bail out the failed EU states. The problem is the citizens of the failed states are free-riding:

…protesters and all of Merkel’s other critics in Rome, Madrid, Nicosia and Athens agree on one thing: Germany should pay for the euro bailout, as much as possible and certainly more than it has paid so far.

They argue that Germany is a rich country that has benefited more than all others from the introduction of the euro, and that it has flooded other European countries with its exports, becoming more prosperous at their expense.

Except there’s the fundamental problem of the debtor nations analogous to individuals transferring their wealth to relatives and then declaring bankruptcy.

But there is also a second image of Germany, one that’s based on numbers, not emotions. The figures were obtained by the European Central Bank (ECB) and released last week. This image depicts a country whose households own less on average than those that are asking for its money.

In this ranking of assets, Cyprus is in second place Europe-wide, while Germany ranks much lower, even lower than two other crisis-ridden countries, Spain and Italy.

Of course, the issue of “Who pays (and why) and who rides free?” is one of fairness, as Dear Reader himself might offer.

The current [Germany pays the bill to save the EU] strategy is not only unfair, because it distributes the burden one-sidedly. It is also economically dangerous, because it could put too much of a burden on the donor countries. And if they began to falter, the monetary union would inevitably break apart.

At some point, don’t the hard-working (but not wealthy) who are supporting the free-riders rebel?

Maybe that’ll happen at the ballot box in 2014… in America, that is.

I’m not too sure about Germany except to say things that can’t continue forever won’t.

Losing hope in America or losing hope in Americans?

The liberal vision of the American welfare state has failed. The percentage of Americans in poverty has barely budged from the time the ‘war on poverty’ was launched, despite transfer payments of $15 trillion since 1964 and the spend-trend is worsening:

According to the Cato report, the federal government will spend more than $668 billion to fight poverty in 2012. State and local governments will spend an additional $284 billion, amounting to $20,610 for every poor person in America, or $61,830 per poor family of three.

Since Barack Obama took office, total federal welfare spending has increased over 40 percent. Obamaphone, anyone?

The liberal vision, which often includes gauzy platitudes about reducing the debt, more  teachers and firefighters, and investing in America seems to ignore the unspoken yet undeniable truth that government cannot cure all our ills, for if it could, it surely would have done so by now. Similarly, if government deficit spending could have healed the economy, wouldn’t it have also done so?

Instead we have the real (yet largely ignored) welfare state issues of unpayable government debt, chronic unemployment, unkeepable government promises, and government’s ever-increasing big-brother intrusiveness.

But the failures of the liberal vision hardly means the conservative message of freedom and opportunity (balanced with personal responsibility) has succeeded, witness yesterday’s election results. As it has been observed, you can’t use tax cuts to buy off people who are net recipients of tax transfers.

“America” is a people, a place, and an ideal, but “Americans” are merely the people who are the residents of the place. Americans may or may not buy in to the ideals America was founded on.

An American Jubilee

The Biblical-era idea of Jubilee was focused on returning property to its original owner and freeing slaves.

The concept of an American Jubilee will be a re-base lining of government programs (massively reducing government obligations like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, disability, and the other costly and unsustainable tentacles of the welfare state) and maybe (it’s unlikely) freeing the tax slaves.

There is a way around an American Jubilee, and that’s for the Fed to induce inflation regarding government debts and obligations to the point where they’re payable. (And it isn’t just in America, it’s all across the nation-states of the West, to include Japan.)

While the Biblical Jubilee has not been observed for centuries, an American Jubilee—and a Western Jubilee writ large—will be observed sometime in the future. Re-electing Obama means the American Jubilee will occur sooner; electing Romney means it will occur later.

Normally (all other things being equal), sooner is better than later. This is an exception.

What explains the President’s welfare-state envy?

What explains the President’s welfare-state envy? To put it into a bumper sticker, it was probably parental abandonment: the fact his daddy didn’t love him.

As a result, Barry has is in for the metaphorical male parental figure, Uncle Sam (that is, the people and the institution known as the United States of America).

Either that, or it’s the more traditional lust for power.

Calling Dr. Freud, calling Dr. Freud…

Hey, as lefty Debbie Washerwoman Schultz might say, prove me wrong.