Main
Index of the Weekly Forecast & Review
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
© Copyright 2010, The Ultrapolis Project – May be used freely with proper
attribution. All other rights reserved.
Greece
Is the Word
System of Government Largess Imperils Foreign Nation, Portent of
American Future
Greeks
Point the Way to Financial Disaster
In the last few weeks, the meltdown of Greece’s financial house has been unfolding before the world, even as the European Union, of which it is a member, has tried to save it from itself. But the trouble was brewing for years, with Greece running deficits far beyond the allowed amount for countries that are within the Eurozone. The trouble is, although the Greek government (with the help of some American financial firms that, as usual, will do anything for money) engaged in some accounting shenanigans to hide its true condition, the reality is that the other member governments knew full well that Greece was not living up to its membership requirements. So why look the other way? Because, it is ALWAYS easier to look the other way. It simply never pays politically to raise the alarm on any issue when the response will require hard, painful, choices, and the ominous consequences are not yet upon the constituency, or its leaders. It’s why governments go bankrupt, why corporate executives preside over decades-long slides to bankruptcy, and why empires ultimately fall.
So, the Greek government looked the other way, fellow European Union governments looked the other way, and the Greek public - so many the beneficiaries of the government’s good deeds – looked the other way. Even as the financial house of cards fell around them, Greek pensioners, teachers, students, public servants, and others dependent on the free-flowing flood of borrowed money, bitterly and violently protested the belated, and relatively modest government efforts to stem the flood of red ink. The reality, let alone the source of their problem, or the danger to their nation state, was of no interest to any of those people.
Since Plato, philosophers have long argued that democracy begins its path to self-destruction when the people discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. Regrettably, they also argue that there is no way out, as the voting constituency that benefits from the treasury becomes too large to oppose in elections. The examples of what we have seen in Greece seem to support that view.
In our own backyard we have seen Michigan, formerly one of our leading industrial states, gradually cannibalize itself from the inside with ever higher benefits and taxes, so that now it is dead last among the 50 states in economic growth and employment. Detroit is a decrepit shell of a city. The trend has been inexorable for forty solid years. But nothing and no one could stop the decline, even as they saw it unfold before their eyes year after year. Now, in our ostensibly wealthy country, state after state, city after city are facing financial brick walls. California, New Jersey, and New York, are facing serious imminent consequences. The same is true for Los Angeles, towns in Ohio, Colorado, and Illinois. But with these entities, as with Greece, even as their dire straits have negative effects on their neighbors, they still do have neighbors that absorb some of the economic slack, and provide financial bailouts. The European Union just announced a $40 Billion plan to prop up Greece. The question is: When it happens to United States as a whole, who will be around to prop it up?
Lady Gaga More Lady than We Knew
Celebrity Surprise Pleasant for a Change
At a recent event called Viva Glam, Lady Gaga said, "I can't believe I'm saying this… don't have sex. It's not really cool any more to have sex all the time. It's cooler to be strong and independent.” She added, "It's OK not to have sex, it's OK to get to know people. I'm celibate, celibacy's fine." Who knew? We predict many of her followers will put it out of their heads after puzzling over it for a few seconds.
Ultrapolis Weekly Readers Slightly Right of Center
54% Identify as Conservative/Traditionalist, or Moderately So
During the month of March we took our first survey of our
readership’s social, cultural and political profile. The survey is not scientific, since only
self-reported responses were included. We
have closed that survey, and now, during the next few weeks, we will be sharing
with you the results of that survey. This
is the first installment on that series of briefs.
In Question 1, we asked our readers to identify their
political leanings, from a list of selections we provided. The survey question did not provide a ‘centrist’
choice, forcing respondents to select a leaning. The biggest group was the right of center
majority of 54%, which itself was almost evenly split between “Conservative/Traditionalist”
and “Moderately Conservative/Traditionalist.” Nine percent of the respondents
identified themselves with the unqualified “Liberal/Progressive” label. Another 36% choose the “Moderately Liberal/Progressive”
option, giving us a 46% left-of-center total.
Surprisingly, only the tiny remainder
reported themselves in any of the Libertarian categories, and none selected any
of the “Very” categories, suggesting our readers shy away from extremism. All in all, the self-reported readership
profile could be said to reflect our own to a greater extent than we expected.
