Yesterday, I did a serious post outlining the absurd policies being pursued in France, Italy, and Greece, along with some much-deserved scorn for the throw-fuel-on-the-fire statist analysis of the International Monetary Fund.
Later in the day, I posted a cartoon about Greece and also included links to other amusing posts about the mess across the ocean.
Well, here’s something that is sort of in between those two posts. It makes a serious point, but in a mocking fashion. Sort of reminds me of the Kevin Bacon line – “Remain calm, all is well!” – from that great movie Animal House.
I especially like the comment from the Ugandan Foreign Minister. Who would have guessed that dozens of third world nations now have better credit ratings than their former colonial masters?
More seriously, the supporters of statism in Europe want everyone to blindly accept their assurances that the welfare state is in good shape and that problems caused by excessive government in one nation surely won’t mean similar problems in other nations with excessive government.
But these clowns never learn. Just yesterday, a bunch of European politicians announced a “growth” plan. Did this mean they were cutting taxes, or perhaps even implementing flat tax reforms? Did this mean slashing the burden of red tape? What about pension reform? Or cutting back the burden of government spending?
Of course not. As the EU Observer reports, they’re going to squander more money.
A high-profile meeting of the eurozone’s biggest economies on Friday (22 June) saw commitment to boost growth by adopting measures worth €130 billion… “The first objective we agree on is to relaunch growth, investments and to create jobs,” said Italian leader Mario Monti after meeting his counterparts from France, Germany and Spain. “We want there to be a significant European growth package, that is worth about 1 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or €130 billion,” he added.
And just to confirm that they are utterly clueless about the real world, the Four Amigos of Statism also endorsed a giant new tax on their shaky banking systems.
The four also declared themselves in favour of a financial transactions tax. French President Francois Hollande pledged to get such a levy off the ground as soon as possible. But there are multiple technical and legal questions. Only a few member states want to go ahead with the tax, and even these differ on the details.
To paraphrase Churchill, never have so few done so much damage to the detriment of so many. I’m sure more spending and more taxes will work wonders for Europe.
I just hope the remaining good people of Europe manage to get hold of plenty of guns and ammunition. As I explained in this interview for NRA-TV, they’ll need to be well armed when there’s a societal breakdown and Europe descends into some sort of Mad Max Dystopia.
