british elections

[Peter Korsten]

Op 8-5-2010 0:27, The Dong schreef:

> I don't think people expect a free lunch, they just feel like they
> walked into a MacDonald's, but got billed for the most expensive
> restaurant in town, plus tips, and to top it off, the chef spat in your
> Cullen Skink..

See, I don't agree with that. It won't take 30 seconds to find a page or 
Facebook group or whatever where people will complain about high taxes, 
and how the government is after their money, their guns (in case of the 
US), or anything else.

If I compare the standard of living with that of, say, 30 years ago, I 
see that great progress has been made to have safer cars, cheaper goods 
(I'm amazed at how little certain things cost), and that people have to 
come to expect to be able to go on a holiday two or three times a year, 
and that they have a right to own their own house, and that the value of 
that house will have gone up by 50% by the time they want to sell it... 
it's all removed from reality.

After all, you don't even pay taxes, and yet they pick up your rubbish, 
you get healthcare, they pave the roads for you... these things all have 
to be paid, one way or another.

When I look at this country, Malta, there is the lowest labour 
participation of the entire EU, and a disproportionally large public 
sector where there are a lot of jobs that are superfluous. Those that 
have a real job have to pay for those that have a 'fake' job, or no job 
at all (like stay-at-home mums, still very popular here).

The money simply isn't there.

Could the government be smaller, more efficient, and less wasteful? In 
my liberal (the European meaning of the word)/libertarian opinion, yes, 
it could. (I'm really doubting whether to vote social-liberal or 
conservative-liberal in the upcoming Dutch elections.)

But at the end of the day, the books have to match. If you continue to 
have a deficit, to finance this, that or the other, it will come back at 
you worse than before.

So the man in the street may blame the bankers and their fat bonuses, 
but they were merely the trigger of something that has been going on for 
decades now. The whole of the financial system of the western world, 
with the US and the UK the most prominent, but also my native 
Netherlands that was trying to be one of the big players in the 
financial system, has been having lunches for all that time. They 
thought the lunches were free, but they were in fact bought on credit, 
and now pay-day has arrived.

And lets face it, our wonderful democratic system allows that the people 
get what they want, and as a consequence, they also get what they 
deserve. Would a meritocracy have prevented this? Possibly, but it has 
other consequences. There should be room for ideology, and the means to 
bring that ideology about.

In the end, it comes down to personal responsibility. But that is 
something that many people - most, even - prefer to shrug off.

- Peter