Share the Poverty

On the BBC Global News Podcast, August 17 AM, a Professor of economics from Athens University argued that the Eurozone must institute a Eurobond system, which, as far as I can tell, would basically force all of the nations in the Eurozone would insure together all of the loans taken out by Eurozone governments.  This would essentially lower the credit ratings of nations like germany and elevate those of nations like Greece, which have been on drunken spending sprees for many years now.  When asked whether this was fair for nations like Germany, he responded by saying that he thought that Germany had no argument and that it was simply not interested in fixing the crisis at hand.  Besides the fact that he didn't answer the question, I horrified at his answer because it shows that Greeks still function under the same beliefs and expectations that got them into this mess in the first place.  The whole problem started when governments started insuring people, and offering them prosperity whether they work for it or not.  Now the many governments are finding themselves in a whole.  Rather than realize that entitlements don't work, these governments have looked to other nations for bail-outs and coddling.  It seems that the only thing these people are willing to do is kick the can down the road, and wait till the problem is even worse to actually take care of it.  Getting a bailout doesn't fix the problems with the socialist system, it only allows the governments to function a little longer, allow people to become more reliant on entitlements, and get deeper into debt.  What really needs to happen, is the Greek people need to come to the realization that entitlements simply are unsustainable.  As painful as it may be to cut entitlements and implement serious "austerity measures", it's the only thing that will work.  Anyone with the most basic understanding of math knows that if ones spending is higher than ones income and one is going into debt, getting a gift of cash for Christmas will not fix the problem, it only puts you back to where you were when you had more money but were spending above your income.  The first thing you must do is bring down your spending to a point at which it is less than your income.  As long as you still spend more than you get, one-time gifts will not fix the problem, they will only buy just a little more time, while making the problem worse if spending is not cut.  The fact is, that although many people understand this, they have been raised in a socialist society in which the idea that individuals are responsible for their own actions is unheard of.  Instead of taking responsibility and bettering oneself, citizens of socialist nations are taught to wait for other people to be forced to bail them out.  Now that the government is no longer able to bail people out, the people want their government to be bailed out, by germans who were responsible with their money and worked hard for it.  Someone has to realize that at some point, even if the Germans were robbed of their hard-earned money to support some lazy bums in Greece who can't dream of waiting till they turn 50 to retire and perform violence in the street as soon as anyone even mentions it, even the Germans would run out of money, because of the gross wastefulness of socialist governments.  The fact that the Greeks won't take any responsibility for their own well-being and that they think it's perfectly fair to confiscate the Germans prosperity is simply sickening and frightening to me, especially considering that America is on the same track and has proven historically to often follow European trends.  I hope that in this upcoming elections, people in America will look at Greece and understand that that's a bad way to go, and vote accordingly.  If not, then I'll at least be able to say "I told you so", not that there will be much comfort in that, I'm sure.