| lordmandeep said: I agree, many people say its unfair that the people of Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain and others have to face social spending cuts due to austerity measures, and they say the banks are all to blame. The reality is all of these countries are far less competitive then the Northern Euro Countries, however they still had top notch social services. You see, Scandinavian countries have great social services because they have a strong economy to support it. The PIGS countries do not, so they have been living well beyond their means for many years and deficits piled up. Add on the financial crisis, a problem became into a crisis and now radical measures are being taken. You see people say the want GOVT to stop spending but get angry when it stops social programs. |
Economies are ecosystems of a sort. When things go well, then you can do more which can make things better. When they snowball the other way, there are more problems, which results in people usually going to the government to fix. End result can end up with a spiral of collapse where, as problems pile up, there is more government involvement, which then ends up causing more problems, and the entire system then collapses. We are close to this now. While people shouldn't panic, people shouldn't either operate under the presumptions this is normal and going to iron itself out, if you just wait it. Why I have been saying what I have is that the citizens, despite their current situation of taxation and so on, are going to have to act constructively to solve problems. There is no magic here. People to take a swig of -isms, that somehow, an ideology, government, unguided markets, etc... will end up suddenly produce a utopia and they don't have to do anything but pay their taxes and be totally absorbed in their own self-interests.
