Results of Governmental Dependency - Granite Grok

Results of Governmental Dependency

What’s happening in the increasingly violent protests in Greece is interesting. As near as I can make out, it seems that the rioters are rioting against "reality," i.e. the fact that the Greek government no longer has money to give them, and can no longer support them (the obvious solution of course is to get into the street, burn buildings, kill people, and smash businesses, I suppose). This is what happens when a welfare or semi-socialist state convulses and contracts from not having any more of other people’s money to spend.

It seems to me we should take heed in New Hampshire about what’s happening in Greece and other collapsing socialist government in Europe, as well as fiscally collapsing states in the U.S. We need to work in New Hampshire to model and implement government structural changes that do two things:

(1) Prevent the state from being able to encourage and build up a politically active and/or powerful class of people dependent on government money (and thus ever-expanding state government)

(2) prevent excessive numbers of people from being able to become dependent upon public money.

Although the two sound like restatements of the same problem, I believe the structural and legal governmental changes needed to address each problem are different. On the one hand, we must restructure state government so as to prevent it from being able to spend ever more of our money to lure people into state-dependency. On the other hand we need to establish structural and legal firewalls that will prevent people from being able to become permanently dependent upon public monies. I have some ideas for both, and would encourage everyone to devote some serious though to the two problems.

Beginning next year, we will have the opportunity to propose, debate, and enact long-term solutions that will prevent New Hampshire from becoming a "little Greece" (or little California, or little New Jersey, or Little New York) in the future. There is already a problem. It must be addressed and solved before we head any farther down the road that the Democrats have shoved us over the past several years

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