Another of my themes readers will
have noticed is the (huge and increasing) size of the state spend in Western
nations, many of which are approaching an irresponsible - because of its
economic, philosophic and moral implications - state spend that is half the
spend in the entire economy: this theme is logical, given it is because of this
we’ve had such complex, draconian semi-police state tax and enforcement
legislation stripping our personal freedoms, forced on us. But how does this
then explain the United Police States of America sinking under its own hubris
of Keynesian debt? There is a mistaken notion, particularly from the Left,
America doesn’t have universal health care (despite Medicare being, from
memory, their biggest single spend), thus it is falsely perceived they have no
welfare state, and so that once great, once free, nation is constantly cited by
the Conspiracy of the Caring - because if you ask 'the Left', only the Left
care - as the bedrock of cruel capitalism. (The same capitalism, where it has
been allowed its state shackles to be loosened, that has given the West, in the
context of history, a higher standard of living than any era before us.)
All lies, of course, as childish and
stupid as the taunt thrown at me on Twitter this week, and by two grown, middle
aged men from the MSM, no less, that ‘Libertarians don’t like people’:
apparently, as with caring, only the Left have some type of monopoly on 'liking
people' – Rand wept. I shall be dealing with the confounding notions on the
caring society soon, but for this post just want to point out America is as
much a Gulag of Forced Altruism, with the creeping cruelty that denotes, as the
rest of the West. First, the US with its pork barrel politics and lobbying is
crony capitalist corporate headquarters of the Western world, and as I’ve
written before, crony capitalism is to laissez faire capitalism what sea horses
are to horses. But also, even I’d not realised just how big their welfare state
actually is: the irresponsibility and immorality of US politicians and voters
is every bit as bad as in Europe. Small wonder the IRS is one of the most
ruthless IR’s in the world, and the United Police States of America states the
case pretty well. From US analyst John Mauldin’s latest e-letter:
Two Workers for Every Social Security Recipient● As of 2012-06 the civilian labor force was 155,163,000.● As of 2012-06 there were 111,145,000 in the private workforce.● As of 2012-06 there were 56,174,538 collecting some form of SS or disability benefit.● The ratio of SS beneficiaries to private employees has thus passed the 50% mark (50.54%).Think about that a minute. There are now half as many people getting some kind of Social Security benefit as there are workers in private employment paying into Social Security. And the trend is clearly advancing. This cannot be sustained. And solving the Social Security problem is the “easy” part of the budget debate. Health care is far more difficult.We read that one in eight families is now getting food stamps and that over 50% of US families get some form of government check each month, while the percentage of workers in the private workforce is shrinking. There is a limit to how much you can take from out of the private sector and still have a growing sector to take something from.
Remember, austerity is not an
‘option’ that politicians can choose, or not, anymore, for more and more
western countries as they are culled by the immutable truth of mathematics:
ultimately, austerity is not an option at all; austerity is simply a fact of the real world when you are broke.
___________________________________________
Blog Posts Coming Soon:
Legislating Orwell’s Slogan of the
Police State, 2 + 2 = 5, Into Actual Tax Law. We've Done it.
The Bride of Gramsci – Deborah
Russell, Tax Lecturer, Massey University, and the Supposed Caring Society. …
Mother-load post.
Rural Sector Warning – The Great
Stagnation Thesis.
Stay tuned …
John Mauldin has included the retired. They receive social security.
ReplyDeleteNZ 2012
Labourforce 2,200,000
Receiving a benefit or Super 800,000
ratio of dependants to workers (accepting there will be a small overlap - some individuals will appear in both groups) is 36 percent. Exactly the same as the US.
Interesting.
DeleteExcept Lindsay undercounts NZ's welfare spend by half (according to the Treasury) or by a factor of four (considering all forms of welfare & wealth transfer) in NZ.
ReplyDelete