America's Economic troubles and Socialism

A Washington Times article titled, "China mocks U.S. political model," (part four) suggests that Chinese leaders in both the political and business sectors watching the economic troubles in Washington and Europe are concluding that their political model is proving superior to the democratic political models used in the Western countries. 

In most media conversations, including this Times article, the U.S. is portrayed as being bogged down in partisan politics, gridlocking the government and preventing the implementation of meaningful and effective solutions to America's problems. Many, both inside and outside the U.S., have bought this myth. And it is a myth. Partisan political bickering is not the actual problem, it is merely a symptom of a cultural clash taking place in America. There are two groups with fundamentally opposed and incompatible ideologies at war in America. Everybody knows who these are - the liberals fighting for Quadrant III communist-style socialism, and conservatives battling to keep Quadrant I American freedom. The liberals have taken leadership of the Democrat party and are bringing their populist constituents along with Pied Piper promises; the conservatives are the constituency of the GOP and find themselves trying to push the reluctant, money-centric GOP leadership to acknowledge their moral and social concerns.

It is not a war of guns and bombs; it is not guerilla warfare in the streets; it is not wholesale massacres and mass graves. That these things are not occurring proves that the American system does work, not that it does not, as such things are the hallmarks of typical socialist revolutions.

Those in the East would do well not to become smug, however. It is true that the European Union and the U.S. are having a time of economic trouble, but the trends which caused that trouble, and which caused the prosperity in the East, would be worth some thought.

The countries in the Eurozone are widely acknowledged as having come to enlightenment and moved dramatically toward socialism in the post-WWII era. They have created vast entitlement states, huge bureaucracies and burdensome regulatory structures. While moving in this direction, they have become less productive and borrowed every bit of money they could find to pay their bloated rolls of entitlement payees and bureaucracy. The free ride is over, and the socialist experiment is creaking and collapsing under the strain.

What direction did the U.S. move? As the peaceniks and hippies of the 'Sixties came into leadership in the 'Eighties, America followed Europe and pushed more and more rapidly away from Quadrant I, toward socialism. Entitlement programs mushroomed, government bloated, regulation exploded, America's debt grew exponentially. All of these factors ignited skyrocketing business costs, so businesses moved out of America.

American business owners found it easy to take advantage of low-cost labor provided by the poverty-ridden workers in the East. In America, just as in those Eastern nations, this created a class of very wealthy business owners while driving down wages for the vast majority of people. Socialism, which touts equal wealth distribution, seems to actually do a very poor job.

In contrast, nations like China (although they would never admit it) have moved from hard-line Communist Socialism towards a neo-Fascist, Quadrant IV style that is at least profit-permitting, and have seen their fortunes increase as they have moved right. They are, however, still socialist. And that is why their crowing is premature. To be truly prosperous, these nations must create and permit what America had before the 1960's - a well-educated and self-motivated, self-disciplined electorate capable of understanding and participating in the progress of the nation. America no longer has that, as its educational leadership provides an education which has dropped from the world's best to rank near the bottom worldwide.  The American middle class was built out of the Puritan ethic of Godliness, loyalty not to the nation right-or-wrong, but to American ideals, and unselfish hard work for the betterment of both themselves and their country.

The Eastern nations are not creating self-sustaining economies; socialist economies have proven to have no ability or provision for that. Building vast "ghost" cities (as discussed here, and worth seeing) that few citizens can afford to live in, just to fabricate an artificial GDP, merely fosters an illusion of prosperity. The nations of the East are not creating a counterpart to the American middle class, but are merely flying high on America's huge deficit spending binge. That illusion of prosperity will burst when the American middle-class is exhausted, as the underpaid workers of the socialist countries which provided the cheap labor to facilitate that spending binge will not suddenly become prosperous consumers.

There are plenty of obvious lessons to be learned here. Nations moving into socialism and away from an engaged, moral citizenry also move away from prosperity. Nations moving away from socialism can move toward long-term prosperity, but at present they are just living on the American bubble. They are not moving toward real prosperity, because as with all socialists, they deny or refuse to see that capitalism and democracy only worked because of that Puritan ethic. No political system can create that ethic, and absent that ethic, corruption and self-interest prevents prosperity. Whether politicians and ideologues can learn these lessons remains to be seen.