When Gov’t gets Big Everyone Goes “Under the Table”
By
7.8.2010
My favorite line is the first one:
“There is no one in Greece that has not bribed a doctor.” This statement from a man sitting on his balcony, smoking a cigarette in a suburb south of Athens. It is difficult to find anyone here in Athens who does not admit to some kind of corruption.
This is what happens when you have socialism - if you have national health care and lines, people with money pay to skip the line; if taxes are too high, people deal in cash – tax free. If someone runs afoul of regulations, people BRIBE the inspectors.
The solution is simple – less government. As Rick Santelli of CNBC said, the best regulator is failure (think AIG, etc). I am already hearing stories of people scaling back their firms, and LAYING OFF PEOPLE so they don’t make over 250k and pay higher taxes n 2011. And I have heard other stories of people simply shutting down their firms – is this the economic growth/change you believe in?
An incremental increase of 5% fewer entrepreneurs and 5% more people collecting benefits – especially the 20 something year old healthy “beggars” I encountered in Berkley over the weekend (with perfect teeth, excellent speaking ability, and good manners – the last person I am going to give money to, with people in this world starving and lacking drinking water, is a healthy 20 year old growing up in the greatest country in the world who chooses to be lazy) – will certainly cause enormous strain on the economy and certainly induce no job creation.