Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Japan's Inevitable Collapse Another Lesson in the Failure of Liberalism

By Douglas V. Gibbs

My son overheard me the other day talking about the American economy, and the financial failure of the European countries.  He's a video game nut, and based on his observation that Japan dominates the video game industry, he said, "Japan's doing good, why don't those countries just follow Japan's example?"

I replied, "Actually, Japan has been in big trouble.  Theirs is pretty bad.  They've been trying to pump all kinds of money into their economy, and it's not working."

"Really?"

"Really."

Then a couple days later an article appeared on Z3 News that confirmed what I told my son.  The article begins:

After more than twenty years of economic troubles, Japan now appears to be entering a terminal phase. They are running out of options as they approach a total economic melt-down.

Since their recession began with the 1990 collapse of the Nikkei stock market, the Japanese government has tried to stimulate their economy with more government spending. Unfortunately, all they have to show for it is massive sovereign debt. The promised economic recovery never happened. They have become Exhibit A in the case against socialism, proving what free market economists have said all along, government spending cannot drive economic growth. The private sector is the engine for growth.

The results in Japan should not come as a surprise. The same results have occurred wherever governments have tried to spend their way out of recession. The United States has made the same mistake repeatedly, including President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930′s, President Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960′s, President Carter’s recession in the 1970′s, and President Obama’s failed stimulus program in 2009, which spent nearly a trillion dollars to produce the slowest economic recovery in American history. The evidence is clear, government spending cannot drive economic growth. Progressive politicians, otherwise known as socialists and communists, don’t like to hear that, but that does not change the facts.


The liberal left, however, could care less about the facts.  The blindness of their ideology does not let them recognize that they are wrong, or that their policies are failures.  Even in Japan, after twenty years of Obama-style policies that have also failed in Europe, the Prime Minister will be doubling down on the chaos, trying to use government spending to end the recession.

Granted, the 2011 tsunami didn't help, but that, and the global recession that allegedly began in 2008, are merely excuses.  Japan is in trouble because they have brought it upon themselves.

Europe, Japan, and the United States, if we don't change course soon, are all on an unsustainable path towards economic collapse.  The big government policies are unsustainable, and what will be next is a faster devaluation of the currencies.  The economies are being artificially propped up by the spending, and printing of fiat money, but the longer these governments refuse to face the piper, the more violent the financial collapses will be.

These economies will fail.  The global economy will collapse.  The severity depends upon when these governments finally read the writing on the wall, and cut spending, cut big government, back off on taxes, reduce regulations, and let the free market do its magic.

I fear their arrogance will never allow them to see the light, and the collapses will be so devastating that folks will wonder if civilization will ever be able to rise from the smoldering ashes.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

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