{"id":54121,"date":"2015-07-03T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54121"},"modified":"2019-10-30T07:05:20","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T12:05:20","slug":"ghost-of-crisis-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54121","title":{"rendered":"Ghost Of Crisis Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Progressives” the world over are pretty much all the same. \u00a0Kevin Williamson on the Greek crisis<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When Greece\u2019s sham economy went ass over teakettle, it agreed to a bailout package, finalized in 2010. That deal is now widely blamed by the Left for exacerbating Greece\u2019s economic crisis with excessive \u201causterity.\u201d The problem with that line of argument is that there was no Greek austerity: Greece lied about its debts before the crisis, and it lied about its reforms after the bailout. It didn\u2019t take the meat axe to its public sector: Greece went out and hired 70,000 new government employees instead. It stopped selling government assets, which it had agreed to do, and government\u2019s share of GDP actually increased rather than declining.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lying about finances to lull the gullible? \u00a0Sounds like the DFL to me.<\/p>\n

Greece’s problem – and you’re seeing it here, too – is that “progressive” economists (and the governments who love them) have the wrong measure of economic health:<\/p>\n

As one Greek supporter of Tsipras\u2019s wheedling told the New York Times: \u201cWe\u2019re all pensioners here.\u201d Indeed, and that\u2019s the problem. A society\u2019s wealth may be measured by its consumption, but its wealth consists of its production. One cannot consume what has not been produced, and consumption can exceed production only as long as your credit lasts, and credit \u2014 n.b., congressional clown conclave \u2014 is never eternal. Greece has too few people working in productive business enterprises and too many receiving government checks, either as employees or as welfare recipients \u2014 a distinction that is increasingly difficult to make in Greece and elsewhere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Keep that in mind, as America’s employment participation rate drops below its lowest levels in a generation or two, even as our population \u00a0– especially the population with a Greek-like love of getting something for nothing – grows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Progressives” the world over are pretty much all the same. \u00a0Kevin Williamson on the Greek crisis: When Greece\u2019s sham economy went ass over teakettle, it agreed to a bailout package, finalized in 2010. That deal is now widely blamed by the Left for exacerbating Greece\u2019s economic crisis with excessive \u201causterity.\u201d The problem with that line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,74],"tags":[289],"class_list":["post-54121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-the-great-recession","tag-kevin-williamson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54122,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54121\/revisions\/54122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}