The Curse of the Welfare State

The American Thinker ^ | October 26, 2010 | Vasko Kohlmayer

[Scanian]

It is Europe's autumn of discontent. All across the continent, people are taking to the streets to protest the austerity measures of their governments. The governments have to cut for a simple reason: They are broke. They no longer have the money to sponsor the kind of padded lifestyles to which their citizens have grown accustomed. This in turn makes the citizens angry -- so much so that they are willing to turn their countries upside-down in order to obtain benefits their governments simply cannot provide.

In France, where the deeply unpopular President Sarkozy is trying to raise the retirement age of 60, things have turned decidedly unpretty. Across the country, cars are getting burned, shop windows are getting smashed, garbage is left uncollected, roads are being blocked, and people are getting beaten up. Nearly one fourth of France's twelve thousand-plus gasoline stations are suffering shortages. Even secondary schools are being blocked and disrupted.

Across the border in Belgium, a rail workers' strike halted rail transport across the country. Only in the northern region of Flanders -- which is the less socialistic part of Belgium -- were some trains running intermittently last week. According to Agence France-Presse, "the strike triggered massive traffic jams on Belgian roads and also disrupted the services of the Eurostar train line which links London, Paris and Brussels."

Late last month, a strike in Spain shut down much of the country's industry and paralyzed transportation services. As many as 70 percent of Spain's workforce walked off their jobs. "The strike has been an undoubted success," gloated a union leader.

Greece now seems to be in a perpetual state of unrest and protest. Two weeks ago, protesters -- mostly government workers -- besieged and then occupied parts of the ancient Acropolis.

[vanilla swirl]

coming soon to a country near you

[central_va]

pla·cate (plkt, plkt)
tr.v. pla·cat·ed, pla·cat·ing, pla·cates
To allay the anger of, especially by making concessions; appease. See Synonyms at pacify.

[GonzoGOP]

The system must collapse. It cannot be modified, fixed or tinkered with. The people who are addicted to government largess will never voluntarily change. So they will continue to take until there is nothing left. Then the entire system will fail.

Only then can a generation be born that has never known nor expects government handouts. Only then can the era of the nanny state become history. Stories about the old days that grandpa tells, but not something real. We are headed for a dark age.

[Leisler]

It’s here already. For years the teachers/firemen/cops/social agency workers have teamed up to support each other. They basically run the towns around here. If they lose a vote their pals just put it up again for 3-5 more votes until it passes. Everyone else gets one vote.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

When it does collapse, the current dependent class, or gimme girls, will be sent to municipal “Town farms” where they will live in barracks and grow their own food. They could perform the community’s menial tasks, currently done by SEIU drones.

The unions will have to be abolished and the number of government employees slashed...like the good old days.

Those former union thug types will either have to move to the poor farm or get a real job in the recovering private sector.

No free handouts except for the truly needy.

[John O]

Across the border in Belgium, a rail workers' strike halted rail transport across the country. Only in the northern region of Flanders -- which is the less socialistic part of Belgium -- were some trains running intermittently last week. According to Agence France-Presse, "the strike triggered massive traffic jams on Belgian roads and also disrupted the services of the Eurostar train line which links London, Paris and Brussels."

Yet another reason for high speed rail. It gives the disgruntled unions (and have you ever seen a non-disgruntled (would that make it gruntled?) union?) another way to cripple the entire economy.

Socialism is a wonderful thing to see at work. /s

[dufekin]

In the case of government “workers” or really “non-workers”, the government can pursue a simple solution. If the “worker” doesn’t show for work more than a specified number of days and lacks good reason (e.g., hospitalization, scheduled vacation), then simply discern that the non-working “worker” voluntarily quit and drop him or her from the payroll. If the position really is necessary, then the government can hire some unemployed person willing to come to work at a fraction of the cost to take the place of the non-working “worker.”

[exDemMom]

When I visited Yellowstone a few years ago, the park rangers gave us a handout warning us not to feed the bears.

In the past, people fed bears. The bears became dangerously aggressive in their efforts to get more food from people, and also lost their ability to forage. They became unhealthy, because people food is not good for bears, and they weren’t getting exercise by foraging.

Eventually, the powers that be decided to put an end to bear feeding. It was hard for the bears at first, but as they learned to forage again, they became self-sufficient, stopped bothering people or coming into camping areas, and their health improved.

I see many analogies between the bears and people who have been conditioned to live on welfare handouts.

[kevslisababy]

I hope the French government sticks to their guns and kills this whole attitude off once and for all (at least for a generation or two). No way must this turn into any kind of victory for the lazy bums that can’t motivate themselves to work too much, but protest and destroy heartily.

[Daveinyork]

They should privatize all those activities, fire the strikers and hire replacements.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

cars are getting burned
Good news for auto dealers.

shop windows are getting smashed
Good news for glaziers.

garbage is left uncollected
Good news for entrepreneurs with trucks.

secondary schools are being blocked and disrupted
Great opportunity for some good old-fashioned home schooling, in the American tradition.

people are getting beaten up
Here's the answer to the whole problem Sarko...blame it all on the Muslims!

[ROCKLOBSTER]

No way must this turn into any kind of victory for the lazy bums that can’t motivate themselves to work too much, but protest and destroy heartily.

Oh this has happened before, not that long ago. The unions shut down the subways. All kinds of rioting and protests.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

I hope these European politicians realize that the only answer is to buckle down and take the heat. There is no rich uncle to bail them out or keep the Ponzi scheme going. They have to not worry about reelection and cut benefits. Sarkozy should raise the retirement age to 66 or 67 and cut other benefits. Then have the military called out to impose martial aw and keep the transportation system running.

[Scanian]

I think some of them looked to Germany for a bailout for a while but Merkel has made it clear that she won’t play the game.

[deadrock]

The money quote for the article:

"What we see happening in France and across Europe are the devastating effects of the welfare state. We see a citizenry whose work ethic, morals, power of reason, and grasp on reality have been grievously damaged. They balk at hard work, yet they want to enjoy lives of plenty and ease. Their governments are bankrupt, but they still keep demanding benefits that are impossible to deliver. And while they refuse to engage in hard labor themselves, they see nothing wrong with living at someone else's expense."

[Joan Kerrey]

All across the continent, people are taking to the streets to protest

This is terrible. The USA must bail them out now before the continent is completely distroyed. Raise taxes on the rich before it’s too late. /s

[The Theophilus]

Only then can a generation be born that has never known nor expects government handouts. Only then can the era of the nanny state become history. Stories about the old days that grandpa tells, but not something real. We are headed for a dark age.

Can you name that generation other than the early days of colonization of what became the U.S.?

Human nature is constant - it is the goal of all mankind to eat heartily from his neighbor's table. What we see more now of is the element of class envy, so it isn't a matter of just dining freely from your neighbor's table, it has become to take the food out of his mouth.

You want to see the future of this country? Look no further than what happened to another contemporary world super-power when it fell. The politically connected and the corrupt took over the means of production and looted the nation's wealth. With so much money tied up in institutional investments, it is just a matter of simple legislation to do to your 401k fund what they did to General Motors. In other areas of the country, the more feral sub-cultures will likely try to emulate Sudan and Kenya with warlords and random violence.

I think the world has absolutely no appreciation for the Peace and Prosperity that was born from the culture of Christianity, and will likely rationalize that the profane and vile will maintain an ethic that they fully despise.

[GonzoGOP]

Can you name that generation other than the early days of colonization of what became the U.S.?

The most obvious example occurred in the wake of the black death. The plague wiped out 2/3 of Europe's population. Labor became so valuable that old landed elite could no longer keep their surfs on the land. Also the old slavish devotion to the church was shattered when no amount of prayer seemed to prevent the spread of the plague. People began to question both the church and the state. People began to look at old Pagan medicine and ideas like hygiene and sewage control which had been ignored or worse suppressed during the dark ages. The church had considered bathing a pagan roman tradition and discouraged it. Sewer systems and running water were considered sings of vanity. The new world of the Renascence could not have happened without the complete collapse of the old order under the pressure of the great plague.

In England prior to the civil war there was a choice. You could trust your life to an absolute monarch or trust your life to a harsh unforgiving Puritan God. Take your pick. But the wars changed that. Cromwell and the Puritans had destroyed the last vestiges of the Royalist order. They then mismanaged things do badly that they too completely collapsed. A new order was created, but in this order power was not to be trusted to either church or state. The individual became the prime mover of society because trust in anything more than self had proven pointless. No longer was high birth required to move up in society. And this allowed the rise of the entrepreneurial class.

In each case, and others such as the collapse of the Roman Republic, it took a complete economic and social collapse to allow a new order to form. And in each case there were several decades of chaos before the new order came about. Decades in which expectations of what government was and what it was supposed to do changed radically.

Human nature is constant - it is the goal of all mankind to eat heartily from his neighbor's table.

I absolutely agree, and that is why a collapse is necessary. Only when the neighbor's table is as empty as your own will people start to rely on themselves. Track almost any great social and economic movement in history and you will find at its source a period of desperation in which men were able to count only upon themselves, and where mobility in society was possible and largely dependent on talent. Eventually these talented individualists will create a prosperous society. Over time generations will be born that have never known desperate struggle. They become dependent. And will continue to be so until an internal or external crisis collapses the system and starts the cycle over again.

[BenKenobi]

“People began to look at old Pagan medicine and ideas like hygiene and sewage control which had been ignored or worse suppressed during the dark ages. The church had considered bathing a pagan roman tradition and discouraged it.”

Which is why the church ran hospitals, tended the sick?

Sir, you’ve been quite lied to on this issue. It’s hard to understand in this day, but the church was strong and the government was weak back then, and the Church was the only thing doing anything to alleviate the suffering of the plague.

You seem to credit the plague for the renaissance, hardly true. Where do you think the folks in Italy got their books from?