Bend over, here it comes again

by Vermont Woodchuck

This has to be one of the more humorous articles published about socialism in some time. No attempt at humor seems to be a cause to write this article, but reality has a way of inserting twists never intended by the penman.

I experienced that “Groundhog Day” moment reading these words, until I realized this is what scribes always write about how socialism turns out.

Sadly, we read about it here too. In Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, etc.; the list goes on. Our housing troubles, trucking, bad roads, oh pick it. Some entity wants a handout from another’s pocket via pork spending. The government has the solution, right over in that sand pile. Must be, that’s where their heads are.

Read the whole article to see our destination with the Donks, bring tissues:

Spain Smacked by a Dose of Economic Reality

Spaniards, used to socialist largesse, are struggling with market economics — and their prime minister is in heavy denial.

A national truck driver’s strike in Spain may be winding down, but it has brought the already-troubled Spanish economy to a standstill. It has also highlighted what happens when a welfare state goes wild. Some 90,000 self-employed hauliers…[snip]… are betting that the government will cave in to their demands. After all, the Spanish government always gives in to labor unrest. [snip]

Spain complains

[snip]
Considering all these grievances, it seems strange that Spanish voters in March gave Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero another four-year term in office. After all, pre-election polls showed that the majority of Spaniards knew full well that Spain was not on the right track, economically or otherwise.

Maybe they allowed themselves to be persuaded that everything would somehow be okay, thanks to Zapatero’s postmodern relativistic political discourse, which posits that all problems are by definition imaginary. Or perhaps they were bribed by the 22 billion euros — a whopping 2.1 percent of Spain’s GDP — in handouts that Zapatero promised to bestow upon them if re-elected. [snip]

During the past 20 years, Spain cashed in on some 100 billion euros — equivalent to nearly one percent of its GDP every year — by way of EU Structural and Cohesion Funds, which are designed to narrow the gap between the EU’s wealthy and poor countries. But now that Spain has reached a per capita GDP of 98.5 percent of the EU average — it was 72 percent in 1986 — the country will begin paying more into the EU than it receives back.

The implication is that Spaniards will have to strike less and work more. But that seems an unlikely prospect. Spain recently led a block, including Belgium and Greece, which sought to prohibit British workers from working more than 48 hours a week. Spanish Socialists complain that if Brits work more than Spaniards, Britain will have an unfair competitive advantage. (emphasis added)

Can’t have productivity, can we?

Problem? What problem?

Just before the March elections, Zapatero insisted that the Spanish economy would grow by 3.3 percent in 2008; since his re-election, however, the government has revised that figure downwards on an almost daily basis. [snip]

So far Zapatero’s post-modern approach to Spain’s economic crisis seems based on three reality-evading pillars: denial, passing the blame, and more denial. His Plan A has involved a pop psychology campaign advising Spaniards that “pessimism does not create jobs.” Plan B blamed “radical liberalism,” which in euro-speak means the free market. Zapatero now wants to implement Plan C, a global advertising campaign in the world financial press designed to highlight his economic management skills.

Spaniards, having grown accustomed to three decades of spoon-feeding by Socialist largesse, are in for a long, hot free-market summer.

Good, big pain might bring some reasoning gain, like getting out of the EU.

A basic tenet in the prog playbook deals with outcomes at variance with wishes. Lie to yourself about what you see. Works every time; ask Gorbachev, Castro, Jong-Il. Or ask the chink leaders who gave up pure socialism in favor of capitalism, why the Great Leap Forward put them on their butt.