Pay Now, Pay Later

The European Union is in big trouble, with their debts taking up more of their GDP than most other countries, and the euros value plunging something like the U.S. housing market two years ago, it is clear that something has got to change. But are the people willing to change and willing to learn or will they just pull out of this spiral and wait for the next. It is obvious that with out change to the system Europe will continue to have recessions. They way that the investments and euro value works was explained to me as something akin to the security backed mortgages that brought so many banks to their knees. Now I will not get into those because I don't know enough about econ to explain even what a security backed mortgage is, but I do know that part of Europe's problem is that the government has too many responsibilities. Europe has a health care system and a standard of living that for years has been the model of what a government can do for its people, now we are seeing what happens when the government takes a burden like that on its shoulders. It can only stand for so long before one little thing brings the whole system crashing down. I compare it to a building, has a foundation that is rated for so much weight and height, as you add on to that building you start to push the boundaries of what that foundation can hold, eventually a wind comes through and suddenly that foundation begins to break and crack up. Now you have a couple choices, one you can put filler in the cracks and just keep doing that till it all crumbles down, or two you can restructure the building. Aka take some rooms out, make it smaller. So it is with a government, they are designed to help the people to keep everyone pointed in a common direction, but if you start giving them more responsibilities like health care and retirement and people begin to depend on them for a standard of living, suddenly it is like that house and the foundation begins to break up. Then when that wind, for Europe Greece's mis-use of the system and the euros sudden lose, comes through something has to be done quick. Europe choose the patch method, of throwing money into the cracks to heal it. This may have been their only option but now they need to begin scaling back, raising retirement age, cutting health benefits, raising taxes. For people who have been so dependent this is a terrifying spectacle, but to me I see it has a look in the right direction. People need to be more self sufficient, it is not the governments job to make sure that we have money to retire on or that we have health care. That is our own job.

Currently America is following Europe, even as their system fails we are trying to copy it. There needs to be a wake up call to the white house that our government is not able to take care of what it has on its plate. We boast a multi trillion dollar debt and technically we already did what Greece did. We hit our debt ceiling and should have had to default on our loans, but instead we just had the power to raise our debt limit. To me this means we need to follow Europe's example today, cut benefits, cut health care, cut social security. And in due time that will lower our taxes and the country will be able to remain self sustaining and with a manageable debt.