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Sunday, August 07, 2011
Who's To blame?
Some fatuous observers tell us that there’s no real problem. Standard and Poor’s caused our financial meltdown, they say, by giving an AAA rating to securitized junk mortgage debt. So, by some odd contortion of logic, its downgrading U.S. Treasury debt is to be ignored.
Janet Daley’s commentary in the London Telegraph is directly on target. Our problem, and Western Europe’s, is not failure to tax “the rich,” but the entirety of the social-democracy, liberal-progressive world view and the political structure created thereby.
If we are to survive the looming catastrophe, we need to face the truth
Quote:
We have arrived at the endgame of what was an untenable doctrine: to pay for the kind of entitlements that populations have been led to expect by their politicians, the wealth-creating sector has to be taxed to a degree that makes it almost impossible for it to create the wealth that is needed to pay for the entitlements that populations have been led to expect, etc, etc.
The only way that state benefit programmes could be extended in the ways that are forecast for Europe’s ageing population would be by government seizing all the levers of the economy and producing as much (externally) worthless currency as was needed – in the manner of the old Soviet Union…
A general correction of the imbalance between wealth production and wealth redistribution is now a matter of basic necessity, not ideological preference.
The hardest obstacle to overcome will be the idea that anyone who challenges the prevailing consensus of the past 50 years is irrational and irresponsible. That is what is being said about the Tea Partiers. In fact, what is irrational and irresponsible is the assumption that we can go on as we are.
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