Other people’s money

No.

signed,
muirgeo

How do you always manage to pack so much wisdom into so few words?

People focus on the default repercussions of higher taxes, inflation, and social unrest. But like those who think recessions are the start of an economic problem (rather than the preceding bubble), these people don't realize that the debt, or rather the spending IS the problem. All of those costs of dealing with the problem cannot be avoided, only made worse by their delay.

“Somalia is probably the best current example of a small government/tax free society”

So, you want to compare stateless Somalia to Barre's stated Somalia?

Kind of makes you wonder, then, how a stateless Kansas would compare to today's Kansas?

I try.

Civilizations exist as long as production exceeds consumption.

The illusion engendered by political control of resources is that consumption can be had without production.

I've wondered if that the impetus behind health care reform is to bail on medicare and introduce rationing of related resources.

A bond rating agency warns of a breakdown of social cohesion as politicians break promises to their citizens to keep promises to holders of entitlement to their citizens' taxes.

Hardly five years ago, I'm hearing that a $3.5 trillion deficit in the Social Security system (excluding Medicare), over the next 75 years, will suffocate the nation. Then the same people telling me so spend a trillion on a new Medicare drug benefit over ten years, another trillion on the Orwellian War on Terror in five years, a trillion to bail out creditors of every description over a few months, more trillions in related Fed programs, another trillion for “stimulus” in a single year, another trillion over a decade to further nationalize health care, all without doing a thing about that $3.5 trillion deficit over 75 years, which assumes the laughable “trust fund” from the get go. I haven't mentioned federal employee pensions and related benefits, because … well … the politicians never do. They only announce that the budget for the military-industrial complex is sacrosanct, and a ten percent tax on tanning salons will pay for it all. No. Really. I'm serious.

The biggest deficits since W.W. II, only without any W.W. II, and this time the deficits are systemic. After W.W. II, we demobilized. Millions of soldiers came home and left the Federal payroll. We don't have millions of soldiers to bring home this time.

Of course not Mr Roberts, one need not wait for Mars or Venus – one can simply expand the money supply.

After all the “Economist” magazine thinks that works, just as it thinks more government spending is “stimulus” (even the near trillion Dollars that Comrade Barack Obama spent – ON TOP OF the orgy of “stimulus” and bailout money that George Walker Bush spent) and it thinks that yet more government intervention (making health care a “right” that is backed by the Federal government) is the way to respond to the high price of health care (in reality caused by the previous government regualtions and spending schemes that Obamacare ADDS to).

So if the “free market” Economist thinks that government spending is “stimulus” and that fiat money systems such as the Federal Reserve Dollar and Bank of England Pound and the European Central Bank Euro make sense……

Why not go the final step (the dream of Keynes) – convert the IMF and the World Bank into a world government (after all the “free market” establishment now believe in “international banking regulations” “tax agreements” and other world government stuff) with its own fiat currency – which it can inflate to create endless prosperity.

Of course, anyone who claims that the above is not “free market” at all is an evil “extremist” out of touch with practical life. The practical life of “too big to fail” bailouts, government spending as “stimulus”, more government intervention in health care as the “cure” for the effects of previous government interventions, and the expansion of the money supply as the way to prevent the bust caused by previous expansions of the money supply.

So no need for Mars or Venus – we are ruled by space aliens already. In politics, the education sytem, and the “mainstream” media.

I understand what you mean but find it a little naive. It was obvious that this was going to happen sooner or later, the european union is basically the rich countries giving some money to the poor while they catch up.
Germany didn´t need to adopt the euro when they had the DM. They did it for political reasons.