UPDATE: Can common sense be breaking out in Washington? Maybe so. If the Democrats shoot their bolt on the pork fest, will they have the guts to come back and do what is needed ?
I wonder how many people think of where the government program of nationalizing failing industry will end up. It might be here, and here.
PARTS of the United Kingdom have become so heavily dependent on government spending that the private sector is generating less than a third of the regional economy, a new analysis has found.
The study of “Soviet Britain” has found the government’s share of output and expenditure has now surged to more than 60% in some areas of England and over 70% elsewhere.
Experts believe the recession will tighten the state’s grip still further as benefit handouts soar and Labour directs public sector organisations to create jobs to soak up unemployment.
In the northeast of England the state is expected to be responsible for 66.4% of the economy this year, up from 58.7% when a similar study was carried out four years ago. When Labour came to power, the figure was 53.8%.
The areas affected are in the north:
Across the whole of the UK, 49% of the economy will consist of state spending, while in Wales, the figure will be 71.6% – up from 59% in 2004-5. Nowhere in mainland Britain, however, comes close to Northern Ireland, where the state is responsible for 77.6% of spending, despite the supposed resurgence of the economy after the end of the Troubles.
Even in southern England, the government’s share of spending is growing relentlessly. In the southeast, it has gone up from 33% to 36% of the economy in four years.
Southeast England is the prosperous area of Greater London and the last refuge of the “Anglo-Saxon Way” according to the French. It is no accident that it is also the home of the “French Silicone Valley.” The rest of Britain (They discourage the term England) is a wasteland, for the most part, and is well described in Theodore Dalrymple’s books.
America has been a special place but that may be changing as we have a new Europhile president (who doesn’t speak any other languages in spite of his scolding of the rest of us) who seems enamoured of socialism.
There is an alternative, as explained here, but it is unlikely to be adopted by this Congress. Republicans should keep their distance from this plan for failure. That would leave them able to offer an alternative for 2010. Obama knows this and he knows that Clinton learned this lesson the hard way when he passed his tax increase in 1993 without Republican votes. The woman who cast the deciding vote lost her re-election campaign in 1994. She was a conservative Democrat and was warned of the consequences as she cast her vote. I hope our Republicans remember that story.
Here is more analysis that concludes the end result will be a European Social Welfare State. Especially note the lack of defense and law enforcement spending in the bill. We need to replace a lot of worn-out equipment in our military and that should count as “infrastructure.” It isn’t there.
