12 May 2010 By
Jacob G. Hornberger Leave it to the Greeks to expose American liberals
and the road to statism they continue to take our
nation. Over the past 20 years, how many times have we
heard European statists extolling the virtues and
benefits of the socialistic welfare state? Europeans
have proven that socialism works, the statists have
repeatedly claimed over the years. Just look at how
successful all that free government dole has proven to
be in Europe. And then there is Greece, which everyone is
conceding is only the first socialist European domino
that is set to fall. Notice that there’s no talk about
how deregulation, free enterprise, free markets, the
bankers, the speculators, profiteers, or greedy people
are responsible for the Greek debacle. Everyone
concedes that the core of the problem is debt, massive
amounts of debt that the Greek government has incurred
to fund the ever-growing demands of the parasitic
class, that is, those Greek people who are on the
government dole. Let’s go back to economic basics. The only way that
government gets its money is through taxes and
borrowing. If it borrows, the way it pays back its
debt is by taxing people and then using the tax
revenues to pay off the debt. So, government is not like a private business,
which creates wealth by producing goods and services
that other people are willing to pay for. Instead,
government confiscates wealth that is being produced
by private entities in the marketplace. Thus, a welfare state is based on the notion that
the government should seize money from people who have
produced it in the marketplace and give it to people
who have not produced it. Not surprisingly, given human propensities, over
time the number of people who are seeking to go on the
dole increases while the will of public officials to
tax people diminishes. Giving out the dole to more
people is fun but collecting the taxes to fund the
dole is not so much fun because people tend to get
angry over that sort of thing. So, to fund their welfare state Greek public
officials just began doing what U.S. public officials
have been doing to fund their welfare-warfare state.
They embarked on a massive borrowing spree, borrowing
ever-increasing sums of money. Needless to say, Greek
statists said the same thing that their counterparts
here in the United States say about the national debt
— that it’s no big deal because “we owe it to
ourselves.” But as the Greeks are discovering, it is a big deal
precisely because “we don’t owe it to ourselves.” One
group of people — the bondholders —are owed money by
the government. And the only way the government can
pay off the bondholders is by taxing another group of
people — those in the private sector who have wealth.
The Greek welfare-state debt has grown so large
that investors no longer want to invest in Greek
bonds. Investors fear a default, meaning that the
Greek government would not pay back its creditors in
full. Why invest in debt instruments if you are
confident the debtor isn’t going to pay you back? There is an obvious solution: dismantle the welfare
state and the massive spending and borrowing it
requires. But that’s anathema to statists everywhere,
including Greece. Meanwhile, Greece’s dole recipients
are on the rampage, refusing to accept even modest
reductions in their dole. Moreover, to pay off the
massive amounts of accumulated debt will require the
imposition of massive taxes on those Greeks who have
money, thereby causing even greater economic burden on
the country. What to do? Not surprisingly, every proposal involves keeping
the welfare state in existence. What the Greeks are
proposing is that German and American taxpayers
(through the IMF) help them out with foreign taxpayer
money. But even if that works, lurking in the
background are more welfare-state dominoes, such as
Portugal and Spain. Who’s going to bail them out? And
who is going to bail out the bailors, such as Germany
and the United States? So, what are American liberals proposing? They’re
proposing what they’ve done for decades here in the
United States: Inflation! Consider, for example, the
following two articles: Bold Stroke May Be Beyond
Europe’s Means and The Greek Crisis by Dean Baker. The
first one is a New York Times news article and the
second one is a commentary on the liberal website
Counterpunch.org. Both articles lament the fact that
the Greeks lack the means to do what American statists
have done for the past several decades — pay off
government debt by inflating the currency. The following is the essence of their argument:
government has incurred massive amounts of debt to
fund its welfare-state programs and lacks the
financial means to pay off its debts. So, why not
simply have the central bank (i.e., the Federal
Reserve or the European central bank) simply print up
the money and use it to pay off the debts? Voila!
Problem solved! So, why can’t the Greeks do that? Because they’re
part of the Euro zone, which the Germans control.
Germans have traditionally been ardent opponents of
inflation, especially given their horrendous
experience with hyperinflation after World War I.
Thus, the German mark, which preceded the Euro, was
always much more solid and sound than other European
currencies. When Germany agreed to surrender the mark
for the Euro, the last thing that Germany was going to
do was accept a weak currency in place of the mark.
But American liberals think that such a sound-money
policy is ridiculous. Baker himself chides a German
official for saying, “Inflation never solves
anything.” Harkening to the standard Keynesian notions that
American students are subjected to all across the
land, Baker’s ideal would be for the Greek government
to inflate at least part of that debt out of
existence. It would revitalize the economy, he says. I
wonder if he’s heard of Zimbabwe. But wait a minute! Does that mean that there are no
costs to inflation? Is it “free,” just like all the
other benefits of the welfare state? Alas, Baker doesn’t talk about the costs, perhaps
because the consequences of inflation have
historically fallen most heavily on the poor, the
sector in society that liberals claim to love and be
concerned about. For example, people on fixed incomes
and low incomes. They’re the ones whose incomes are
devastated by the ever-increasing prices that
inflation produces. Inflation is nothing more than a tax, but the
reason that statists love it is because they know that
the poor and ignorant won’t figure out that it’s a tax
on them. They’ll inevitably blame rising prices on big
business, free enterprise, private owners, free
enterprise, greed, OPEC, service stations,
speculators, bankers, capitalists, and maybe even
illegal aliens. Moreover, liberals simply block out of their minds
that inflation is just another form of legalized
welfare-state stealing. By intentionally paying off
creditors with debased money, the government plunders
and loots people who lend money in order to help out
the entities, including the government, to whom they
lent the money. Where is the morality and justice in
that? Inflation is just part and parcel of the big fraud
and scam known as the welfare state, a way of life
that is bankrupt in every sense of the word — morally,
financially, and economically. And that’s the road that American statists have
taken us and continue to take us — the road to
serfdom, the road to bankruptcy, the road to moral
debauchery, the road to Greece, the road to the Roman
Empire. Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The
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