Dear Friends,
It seems to me that we don’t mind spending money on what we see as a good deal but when we feel we are being taken advantage of, or think it’s a bad deal, we use every excuse or cover to get out of paying. This self evident fact of human nature can be used to deductively reason, (A posteriori), that if we are reticent to pay for something, we see that thing as a bad deal. We can now say, if people don’t want to pay for something, it is probably a bad deal and inversely, if they want to pay for it, it is probably a good deal. This simple and logical conclusion has very important implications on international affairs.
Take first the example of a good deal. If you or I find a good deal on something we want, or especially need, and we perceive the window is closing on our ability to purchase it, we will force money into someone’s hands. We want the good deal and are unwilling to pass it up. So much so that we vote with our pocketbooks.
If we are cornered in a bad deal, however, we seek a way out. Lets say your brother makes a deal and commits you to it. You look at it and believe it to be a bad deal. Will you gladly pay or try to stop the deal? Maybe even just get out of paying for it. No one likes to waste hard earned money. Least of all on a bad deal.
So now we can take the inverse to be true, namely that if someone is willing to pay for something they see it as a good deal, but if they don’t want to pay, they see it is a bad deal. We know this from our own reactions. So if we take this as true then we can use this as a yardstick to measure, by people’s actions, how highly they value any given deal. Simply by gauging their willingness to pay for it.
The unbiased media are reporting that the problem with the European debt crisis, you know, the crisis that is threatening to collapse the World economic order, is that tax evasion is rampant in Greece and Italy to a lesser extent. This tax evasion, the demand sider economists say, results in huge government deficits. They go on, that if only the tax evasion could be corrected, then the problem would go away.
Lets apply our spanking new yardstick to the problem. Tax evasion is another way of saying that people don’t want to pay for their government. In the case of Greece it would seem that the citizens of Greece don’t feel that their money is being spent wisely by their government. Pretty damming really. The people who have the clearest view of an organization’s spending believe that it is a bad deal. Pretty damming.
So the people of Greece believe that their government is such a bad deal, they are not willing to pay for it. Yet expect other people, from other countries, to pay for their bad deal government? A bad deal is a bad deal. If I have to pay $600.00 for a cord of green wood, it is a bad deal, no matter if it is I that spends the money or someone else. In the case of Greece the government is a bad deal pure and simple.
But what do I mean by a bad deal you might ask? In the case of government a bad deal is where people’s perception is that their government wastes money. People who work for government, public servants, are overly paid and corrupt, money is given away without oversight let alone fiscal prudence, Money is given away unjustly, and regulation make following the laws including tax law something only the profoundly sadomasochist would do. These are all reasons why people might find their government a bad deal.
But what is to be done about the European sovereign (government) debt crisis? The people themselves have voted that their governments are bad deals, but the political and economic Elite are telling the rest of us that they are good deals. If only they can be floated awhile longer. The unbiased media claim the Elite will come up with some way the national governments can kite the system for a minute, (or two), longer. What they mean is they want to force the market system to absorb the losses from the bad deal while the Elite protect themselves. The check kiting is magnifying the problem to such an extent, it is becoming obvious, now almost everyone sees it, even the most myopic. Now, we stand at the precipice and no one is willing to tell the people of the planet why we are here, except a very few. No matter how we fall, it will be the same people who threw us all off the economic cliff, that will run the show afterwards. Because it is only in politics that the people that run the show are never to blame when things go wrong.
I guess it’s not a bad deal for everyone, just you and I…
Sincerely,
John
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