{"id":757,"date":"2011-11-01T08:44:45","date_gmt":"2011-11-01T14:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/?p=757"},"modified":"2011-11-01T08:44:45","modified_gmt":"2011-11-01T14:44:45","slug":"elections-in-greece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/elections-in-greece\/","title":{"rendered":"Elections in Greece"},"content":{"rendered":"

Europe and the financial markets are in turmoil over the decision of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou\u2019s call for a referendum<\/a> on the recent deal reached to rescue the country from it financial problems.\u00a0\u00a0 Some called it<\/a> \u201ca strange thing to do.\u201d\u00a0 Other were<\/a> \u201cirritated,\u201d while a member of the opposition called it<\/a> \u201ca dangerous and frivolous decision.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

While there seems to be few that support his call, I think it is great!\u00a0 Who would have thought that democracy in Greece would cause such a problem?\u00a0 There is, in fact, a deeper issue here, and one that goes to the heart of the financial problem in Greece, the rest of Europe, and even here in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While they are vastly different movements, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements do share at least one common belief, and it is a belief also shared by a large segment of society.\u00a0 It is the belief that things are out of their control.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Tea Party sees government as having lost touch with the people and \u00a0on a seemingly uncontrollable spending binge that threatens to turn this country into Greece.\u00a0\u00a0 Occupy Wall Street seems to hold that the rich and powerful, symbolized by Wall Street,\u00a0are out of control and that their greed is causing our problems.<\/p>\n

The idea that there are forces and powers outside of our control that are running things is not new.\u00a0\u00a0 In the extreme, this belief forms the basis for many of the conspiracy theories that seem never to go away.\u00a0 But this idea exists and influences behavior beyond just conspiracy theories.\u00a0\u00a0 While this type of thinking can be found on both the right and the left, it is particularly strong on the left, for there it is integrated into the way they view the world.<\/p>\n

Compared to Occupy Wall Street, the Tea parties come at this backwards.\u00a0 The Tea Parties started out of an alarm over the massively exploding debt.\u00a0\u00a0 Throughout the Bush years many Democrats and some Republicans complained about the growth of the debt. In fact, the Republican loss of the Congress in 2006 was probably due more to the failure of Republicans to rein in spending, than the War in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Yet with Obama and the Democrats, the deficit did not go down, it went up even more. In fact it exploded to unprecedented heights to a level roughly 10 times higher than the last Republican budget. To make matters worse, this was not just a short term problem due to the recession. The Obama budgets showed huge deficits with no end in sight.\u00a0\u00a0 This caused a lot of people to focus what was going on, and the Tea Parties were born.<\/p>\n

Whereas the Tea Parties can point to specific problems and polices, Occupy Wall Street has no such specificity.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead, they seem to be trying to force the current problems to fit their existing worldview. The Left is, at its core, a movement of division.\u00a0 It sees the world as a series of competing groups: labor, management, union, non-union,\u00a0 rich, middle class, poor, men, women, white, black, Hispanic, etc, etc, etc..\u00a0<\/p>\n

While there are many problems with this worldview, the key problem in this discussion is that \u00a0these divisions frequently end up viewing things in\u00a0an us-versus-them fashion.\u00a0 In doing so it separate actions from responsibility.\u00a0\u00a0 This is most easily seen with labor unions.\u00a0\u00a0 At their core, Labor unions pit management against employees, using force and intimidation (normally the use of the strike, but historically often physical force and intimidation as well) to get changes to working conditions.\u00a0\u00a0 This engenders a get-all-you-can mentality, without any responsibility for the consequences.\u00a0\u00a0 If management gives in too much and the business (or even industry) fails, that is management’s fault for agreeing to union demands.<\/p>\n

We currently see this issue playing out in a number of states.\u00a0 Government unions are a particular problem in that government employees are often a significant political force,\u00a0 a force which can get their candidates elected.\u00a0 As such in many instances they find themselves effectively negotiating with themselves, i.e. the people they elected.\u00a0 This has led to huge problems in many states, as wages and benefits have far exceeded those in the privates sector and where grave concerns exist on how these obligations will be paid for.\u00a0\u00a0 California, for example, which is already in serious\u00a0financial trouble, also\u00a0faces an unfunded pension liability of $500 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Returning to Greece, this is the core of their problem.\u00a0 In short, the Greek government spent too freely, made too many promises, and now the bill is coming due. But the Greek people do not yet seem to grasp this and there is broad disapproval with the debt deal. Polls<\/a> \u201cshowed that nearly 60 percent of Greeks viewed the deal as negative or probably negative.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

If democracy is to work, people must be free to choose, but also to suffer the consequences of those choices.\u00a0\u00a0 There is no such thing as choice without consequences, at least in the long run, and the belief that there is, is one of the gravest dangers for any democratic system.\u00a0 In the short term the consequences can be postponed, and thus ignored. But eventually the bill comes due, as is currently happening in Greece, and will\u00a0eventually happen here.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is the big difference between the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street.\u00a0\u00a0 The Tea Party wants to bring spending and the debt under control now.\u00a0\u00a0 Occupy Wall Street is still in an Us-versus-Them mentality, refusing to take responsibility and instead seeking to blame unseen forces of Wall Street for just not paying their fair share.<\/p>\n

So I say let Greeks vote, but let them take the consequences of that vote. That way, regardless of what they decide, the Greek people will be responsible for what happens.\u00a0 They will not be able to blame others, as they almost certainly would have, had this deal been imposed on them against the will of the majority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Europe and the financial markets are in turmoil over the decision of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou\u2019s call for a referendum on the recent deal reached to rescue the country from it financial problems.\u00a0\u00a0 Some called it \u201ca strange thing to do.\u201d\u00a0 Other were \u201cirritated,\u201d while a member of the opposition called it \u201ca dangerous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[1992,208,217,260,384,390,399,416,475,562,603,934,938,1086,1100,1102,1247,1271,1333],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budget","category-economy","tag-budget","tag-bush","tag-california","tag-choice","tag-debt","tag-deficit","tag-democrat","tag-division","tag-europe","tag-george-papandreou","tag-greece","tag-obama","tag-occupy-wall-street","tag-referendum","tag-republican","tag-responsibility","tag-tea-party","tag-the-financial-markets","tag-union"],"yoast_head":"\nElections in Greece - Politics and Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/elections-in-greece\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Elections in Greece - Politics and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Europe and the financial markets are in turmoil over the decision of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou\u2019s call for a referendum on the recent deal reached to rescue the country from it financial problems.\u00a0\u00a0 Some called it \u201ca strange thing to do.\u201d\u00a0 Other were \u201cirritated,\u201d while a member of the opposition called it \u201ca dangerous […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/elections-in-greece\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Politics and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-11-01T14:44:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elgin Hushbeck\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elgin Hushbeck\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/elections-in-greece\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/elections-in-greece\/\",\"name\":\"Elections in Greece - 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