casewinter13 said:
Grizzoola, rather than a deflection, I'd actually be really curious to hear your rebuttal on the way off topic subject at hand. Massive government spending is good, right? So, where exactly did Europe go wrong? Shouldn't the EU be a Utopian society by now? Break it down for me, man!
Ok, you don't want to look at history, the New Deal, WWII, and how all that deficit spending helped our economy. BTW, tax rates on the rich were multiple times higher than they are now. Plus, the government controlled wages and prices over a period of 5 years. Every able-bodied man and woman had a job either in the service or a defense plant.
Result? Your grandmas and grandpas at the end of that 5 years had money in their pockets they didn't have, before. It was not due to "free" enterprise. It was not due to "free" markets. It was due to MASSIVE GOVERNMENT SPENDING. Deficit spending and the national debt nosedived practically in months after WWII. Why? Because people took that money and spent it. They became customers. They created demand. This demand financed private businesses. In the meantime, people and businesses were paying back that money to the Feds through their taxes.
As to Europe, each country got into trouble, not because of its social programs, but because private banks and government officials got too heady about the prosperity they thought they could gain. They departed from the conservative nature of socialism and opted to gamble in the private sector. Each country went about it a different way, due to its culture, but the result was the same.
In Greece, for example, hardly anyone in the higher incomes paid any taxes because the government did not press the issue. Consequently, the government went to deficit spending to make up the shortfall between its services and its revenue. Had the higher income earners paid their fair share, Greece would not be in the straits it is. Sound familiar?
I'm very bored by you guys who have this "free" market, "free" enterprise mantra that sounds good on paper, but does not work out in practice, to the detriment of millions of people in this country. The private sector has its place, but that is not the only place. Government figures equally, and if you deny that, then you'd be more comfortable living in America of the 1870s.