CONTAGION
Contagion! That’s a word you don’t want to hear. It means what’s over there is coming here. Everybody has heard the mantras “we are loading our grandchildren with debt,” and “future generations will pay the price for our spending folly.” However, it’s not the distant future we have to worry about because the nasty stuff is going to happen to us in the here and now. Future generations are going to be more worried about their safety than their finances. We, on the other hand, are going down with the ship.
You can only commit economic and financial sins for so many decades before you have to pay the price. Everybody is familiar with our enormous debt and runaway spending. We throw money around wastefully in order to stimulate the economy. In fact, our government employs waste as a policy. Wasting money is the new road to prosperity.
It’s not just spending madness, astronomical debt and inflationary money printing that threaten us. It’s the growing national mood of hostility towards capitalism. It’s the public’s demand for subsidies and their fierce resistance to cuts. It’s the government elevating green energy while undermining the market economy. It’s a growing and incompetent bureaucracy extending its regulations into our lives. In other words it’s Socialism.
The socialist nanny state is the model that’s failing in Europe. They can no longer borrow enough to keep social programs intact. In some countries socialism has made them lazy, spoiled and demanding. In other countries a hoard of trouble makers depend solely on government for their livelihood. European nations excel at extracting the income and wealth from the workers and producers and passing it out to the moochers. However, when government plays Santa Claus it gets carried away with the gift giving. It has to borrow so much that it can’t borrow any more except at an interest rate that sinks both the government and the economy.
Will this European contagion spread to the U.S.? Some sort of economic punishment for our spending sins is inevitable. The socialism that’s failing in Europe will also fail here. It’s not a question of whether we will suffer dire consequences, it’s only a question of when. It’s possible that the dollar will soon have the purchasing power of a Kleenex. The time of reckoning won’t be postponed for long. If you want to take the time to look you can see it coming.
