Behold, the power of expectation- or rather, crushed expectations.
Riots engulfed central Athens and at least 10 buildings went up in flames in mass protests late Sunday as lawmakers prepared for a historic parliamentary vote on harsh austerity measures demanded to keep the country solvent and within the eurozone.
All those years of high wages, state welfare, unemployment benefits, and health care provided by the state coupled with tax evasion, corruption, graft, and a general indifference to pulling one’s own weight have come home to roost. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Since May 2010, Greece has survived on a €110 billion ($145 billion) bailout from its European partners and the International Monetary Fund. When that proved insufficient, a new rescue loan package worth a further €130 billion ($171 billion) was decided — combined with a massive bond swap deal that will write off half the country’s privately held debt.
Mortgaging the future of your country for the pleasures of the moment is bad policy. It seems like sensible people would know that. Alas, the Southerners of Europe aren’t as Reformed as their northern neighbors, which is why a free gift is to them better than an earned wage.
In spite of any hope to the contrary, you reap what you sow.
And yet, our current administration wants to take us down that same path.
the repubs haven’t done any better- the highest increases in national debt being the result of republicans george bush and st. reagan.
The national debt increased by about $1.7 trillion ($.9t to $2.6t) from 1980 to 1988, about $4.35 trillion ($5.67t to $10.02t) from 2000 to 2008, and about $6.2 trillion ($10.02t to $16.4t) from 2008 to 2012 (projected).
The debt to GDP ratio rose 19.4 percentage points (32.6% to 51%) from 1980 to 1988, 13 percentage points (57% to 70%) from 2000 to 2008, and 30.4 percentage points (70% to 104%) from 2008 to 2012 (based on projected spending and GDP growth projections for this fiscal year).
“Being the result of” is ambiguous. There are a lot of causes of changes in federal income and spending every year, many of which are not under the control of the President. Debt figures are much more clear (I went here: http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us), and they show that the national debt in the last four years has risen more in both absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP than during the eight years of either President Reagan or President Bush.
This is not to suggest that replacing President Obama with a GOP President this fall will change the path this country is on. I doubt it. In my opinion the U.S. is already destined to repeat Greece’s situation. I hope I’m wrong.