This piece by Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair is a real eye-opener. No matter how fiscally inept and corrupt you thought Greece’s government, the picture it paints is much worse, of a country where no one blows the whistle on tax cheats because everyone is a tax cheat, and everyone still expects to get their 14 monthly paychecks a year. Everyone is in on the game, even the monks.
Especially the monks.
This is the endpoint of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, the final pre-collapse state of socialism: Everyone wants to grab their share, but no one wants to pay for it, and the supply of other people’s money is finally running out. This is the where Obama’s Big Government economic policies must inevitably lead: A declining state with huge budget deficits run for the benefit of bureaucrats.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Tags: Greece
I want the rich to pay for it, starting with gutting the Bush tax cuts, and shifting the resulting resources toward the middle class and small businesses.