Makers and Takers: The End Game

Two comments:

1.Democracy works until people learn they can vote themselves money from the treasury.

2. If pigs could vote the man carrying the slop pail would be elected herdsman everytime; regardless of how many he is slaughtering on the side.

"Democracy works until people learn they can vote themselves money from the treasury."

What do you mean by "until"? When it comes to democracy, this isn't a bug, it's a feature.

Two hundred years ago, the ballot was public and entirely transparent: "A pint and a shilling to every man who shows his hand for Sir Charles!"

Now, with the secret ballot, the bribing has simply had to become somewhat more oblique: "Vote for Charles Shmucks and there'll be 'free healthcare' and a tax credit for everybody!"

Excellent article cjunk! I live in one of the biggest 'taker' areas in Canada. In the Yukon - once the land of proud entrepreneurs who manned many productive enterprises: staunch, independent individuals who lived life on their own terms - the Yukon under successive Dipper/Liberal/PC territorial guments and Liberano Federals was already a giant leach on the provinces before the Tories won the minority. Billions of dollars have been transferred to this resource rich territory in the last few years and the money has been squandered on the pets of the territorial gument - contracts for their pals, buildings and grants to mega welfare for the cilly servants, high paying jobs for 'friends' to redesign functioning roads, intersections etc. The pricey condo mega projects that have razed the character of the old Gold Rush downtown is sad and very ugly. $$ transferred for affordable housing has been a slush fund for contractors and bureaucrats. The Yukon Medicare is the most generous in Canada and millions of your dollars are spent flying people south for real or imagined ailments. Yukon Housing is luxury housing for old folks/welfare cases - all prescriptions/dental (including dentures) eye glasses etc are paid for by medicare and to top that off, there are no medicare premiums in the Yukon. Gument workers (89% of the workforce) get huge wages (a dishwasher earns $23.50 per hour!) lots of 'perks' - like two free trips to anywhere in Canada per year, many get moving expenses paid, generous income tax deductions...

Meanwhile a modest house costs a half million, rent is sky high for anyone not on welfare, young people move out as gument workers move elderly parents up here for the generous benefits. The Yukon produces nothing; all mines have been closed by the environmentalists. The squawking drove out the miners and the producers - even the farmers. The Yukon is dependant on the provinces for every dime and 35,000 people have been showered with Federal government enabling them all (except private small business) to live like pampered brats.

The Yukon could be your petri dish, cjunk. PMSH warned the Yukon that the 'party' was going to peter out - I hope that will be a good omen for this economic crippled territory to learn to walk again on it's own. My once proud feeling to be a Yukoner has been replaced by embarrassing for many years (I don't work for the gument so I don't have the big bucks to flash around, I do earn a good income but nothing like my pals in the gument) I am hoping that the Prime Minister is going to consider a bit of 'tough love' for the Yukon; out of consideration for the people who do produce.

Thanks for the great article, cjunk. Lots of food to thought.

Roman bread and circuses will only last until the barbarians come.

And the barbarians always come

The world is chasing a 500 trillion dollar debt,
with overloaded interest for the idiots.

Imagine an old dog chasing his tail,
just about to fall off a 100 meter lift.

In a few short years,
your ability to produce and store food will be as important to you as the Ark was to Noah.

Well written indeed!

The end game of Crony socialism ( the kind we have had installed in Canada by the Pearson-Trudeau era fabians) is that it is nothing more than the revenues from a Ponzi tax and spend scheme used to feed a patronage brokerage. Economically it's a simple pull and put equation. When the takers out number the givers,( or when government entitlements outstrip taxing capacity) there is insolvency and a failed state.

Greece is the latest example. The US is very close to dollar collapse due to funding social spending by printing money with no productive capacity to back it.

Failed bankrupt states - The legacy of all corrupt government.

“The last official act of any government is to loot the treasury.” – George Washington

Maggie Thatcher

Socialism works until you run out of other people's money.

What do you mean, no mines in the Yukon. The Minto mine of Capstone Resources has been operating for a few years now.

tranio: http://www.yukon-news.com/business/22715/ bad news for Yukoners - they all import their own labour.

I’m an engineer. I can fix it. It’s a structural problem, a design flaw.

See, you elect a bunch of legislators, and give ‘em the right to legislate AND tax. Greatest moneymaking scheme ever invented, and you wind up where we are now.

Fix it this way. Two separately elected legislatures. One to legislate, but can’t tax. Another – separately elected, remember – taxes, but can’t legislate.

That’s a fundamental re-alignment of politicians’ motives. Nobody gets to climb up on the stump and yell “Elect me and I’ll tax the other guy to featherbed you”. Doesn’t work that way anymore. It’s “Eelect me, and I’ll make sure those legislators only get responsible legislation funded” and “Elect me, but I can only legislate as irresponsibly as the Taxers will allow me to.”

Think about it.

The answers are a culture predisposed to lower taxation and self support and most importantly a constitution that supports porperty rights.

At the end of the day taxation is forced confiscation. If there is no arm of that government that will stop the "tyranny of the majority" then constituions and courts are supposed to stop it.

At the end of the day though it is the people who have to object, or at least enough of them to make it the schemes unworkable. The tea party is that reaction. Although I have some issues with them they are a natural and positive reaction to what is coming down the pipe.

2012 is a very crticial election. It isnt just electing someone who says the right things but someone who will actually do it.

The choice set is going to be interetsing. But Obama has shown zero interest or apptitude around this question, he wont act. Almost anyone, including a number of Rino's would do more with a stiff Teas PArty in Congress and backing in the election.

If there is action post 2012 election, ideally before, then the US can be saved. It is not Greece. But anything past that and more dire stuff will happen.

The Soviet Union collapsed for the simple reason that it was the world's biggest welfare state. It didn't help that it also insisted on building an "empire" of socialist workers' paradises (Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, Afghanistan, etc.) that sucked the life blood out of it via foreign aid.

The collapse didn't come in an orderly manner either. You can't have an "orderly" collapse of a disorderly system. A friend who was a university professor in Kiev, with a high paying job and the promise of a good pension, one day found herself with neither. The Ukranian government had gone broke, and there was no money to pay her. It was that simple.

Similar things are going to happen to countless government employees in this country as well. It will also be very rough for people who are dependent on governments for items like pensions and medical care, which pretty much includes all of us.

"most importantly a constitution that supports porperty rights. "

Stephen: All socialism runs on the premise of collective property. Without this conversion of private [roperty tp government claim/care, none of socialism's romantic wealth redistribution could occur. In fabian socialism (like Canada's)wealth redistribution is accomplished through taxing private property (income, capital gains, real estate, homes etc).

You can now clearly see how Trudeau ( A doctrinaire collectivist-socialist) would allow no definitive protection for private property in the socialist nation he chartered in 1982.

With constitutional private property rights, income taxing and property taxing go out the Supreme Court window. A good socialist kleptocrat can't have any of that.

We are just repeating history. The democratic system is the best of the bunch but a collapse is still inevitable. All great democratic societies have ended the same way. The government over promises to the citizens and its employees. The burdens become to great for the private sector to bear. The takers are to entrenched to cut back on. Eventually the people that are paying the bills flee to greener pastures or just give up on working for a living and the collapse ensues.

There will be no long term fix. There never has been.

"The US is very close to dollar collapse due to funding military operations by printing money."

I fixed that for you.

The reason the US went off the gold standard was to be able to wage "unlimited war".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock

http://www.trivisonno.com/the-troops-still-cant-come-home

Now the US gets to find out that "unlimited war" actually HAS limits.

Read those articles,then look at the numbers if you don't believe me.

Decent article by Trivisonno, who points out the folly of engaging in wars with no particular goal in mind. In the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, it seems like the U.S. is committed not only to fighting terrorists, but to fixing literally everything that is wrong with those nations. If that's the case, the troops will never come home.

However, by far the biggest fiscal threat to the U.S. government are the trillions in benefits it has promised to users of Medicare and Social Security. You could eliminate the defense budget completely and the U.S. would still be on the road to a failed state because of those run-of-the-mill welfare state commitments.

Similarly, nations like Greece, Portugal and Ireland have next to no military-industrial complex and yet are in worse shape than the U.S. Again, it's because of their ravenous appetites for welfare state "goodies".

There are lots and lots of people who would like this decline to be about war and stuff, KK would appear to be one of those.

But the truth of the matter is that the entire US military budget, $1000.00 toilet seats and all, is a pittance compared with the massive social welfare budget. Medicare/Medicaid alone is as large or larger than the US military budget.

Yeah, they spend a lot on bombs and bullets. But its welfare, housing debt and social security that's going to break them. Liberals don't want to hear that, but its still true.

and we have to listen to E Jacku Layton propose strengthening public pensions . the guy is constantly shooting off about everything. one can only suppose after his prostate operation he has a large public funded supply of Vi agra

Everything that Jema 54 said is true. The Yukon has been overrun by bureaucrats, who do their best to regulate the industrious working people to death. Many of these silly servants are also radical environmentalists, who want to turn the entire territory into a park. They drive around with their fancy SUVs, with bumper stickers saying 'Save ANWR' and 'protect the Peel', completely oblivious to their hypocracy that they need oil drilling and mining to sustain their lifestyle. Having an artifical economy that is 80% government spending is completely unsustainable. We could easily slash the vast government bureaucracy by 90% up here and send those government yuppies back down south. The Yukon needs to return to the spirit of the Gold Rush, which is characterized by rugged individualism, self-reliance and frontier entrepreneurship, rather then the gross dependence on government that exists today. By reinstating these principles, and eliminating the exorbitant government waste, the Yukon can once again be a shining beacon of freedom for Canada.

Great line at C-Junk: "destroy the "progressive" infrastructure"

Could not agree more.

Sell off ceeb tv.

Do it now, do it for the children...