By Patrick J. Buchanan
They are called the PIGS — Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain. What they have in common is that all are facing deficits and debts that could bring on national defaults and break up the European Union.
What brought the PIGS to the edge of the abyss?
All are neo-socialist states that provide welfare for poor people, generous unemployment, universal health care, early retirement and comfortable pensions. Most consume 40 percent to 50 percent of their gross domestic product annually, a crushing burden on the private sector.
Dying populations is a second cause. After two world wars, the Europeans lost their faith and embraced hedonism and materialism, la dolce vita. Large families fell out of favor. Women put off marriage and babies, and went to work. Birth control and abortion were made readily available in every country and, if not, just across the border.
For 30 years, the fertility rate of Europe has been below the 2.1 children per woman necessary to replace a population. In Russia and Ukraine, a million people disappear yearly. In Western Europe, the passing of the native-born goes on quietly, as Third World peoples come to fill the empty spaces left by the aborted and unconceived.
Turks are in Germany. Pakistanis, Indians, Arabs and Caribbean peoples are in Britain. Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans occupy the southern coast of France and the banlieues around Paris.
These newcomers have neither the education nor skills of the Europeans. Hence, they earn less and contribute less in taxes, but consume more per capita in social benefits.
As the number of young entering the European labor forces shrinks, the number of seniors and aged grows. And thanks to advances in medicine, these retirees live lengthening lives. Thus the burden of pensions and health care grows steadily and the need for higher taxes and larger worker contributions increases.
Then there is globalization. In Europe, wages and taxes are high, regulations heavy, unions strong, and lawyers ubiquitous. Manufacturers, to cut costs, have been outsourcing production to where the labor is cheap and abundant, the unions are nonexistent or weak, and health, safety and environmental regulations are lax. Welcome to China.
Greece is the first European nation to hit the wall. As an EU member state, she is obligated to keep her deficit to 3 percent of GDP. But this year’s is 12.7 percent, and Athens needs to issue $75 billion in bonds alone to finance the deficit and roll over debt.
The markets, however, are rating Greek bonds as risky bonds. To borrow, Athens must pay more than twice the interest rate Germany pays. Faced with strikes by public employees and students, Athens appears to lack the political will to make the cuts necessary to bring the budget back toward balance.
As Portugal, Ireland and Spain gaze on, Greece approaches a moment of truth. Should she default, their bonds, too, will plunge in value out of fear of a copycat default, and the interest rate they pay would also rise. They, too, might then take the Argentine road.
The EU’s crisis would then be like a crisis in the United States should California default on its state bonds and interest rates on other municipal bonds surged to double digits.
Is there a way out?
One option is for the EU to bail out Greece with a huge loan. But if Greece cannot meet her debt obligations now, how could she pay back the loan? And if the EU cannot compel Greece to make deep budget cuts today, what leverage would the EU have after bailing out Athens and removing today’s pressure on the government?
A second option is to call in the International Monetary Fund, which imposes tough conditions on nations receiving IMF loans — the Third World therapy. But problems would arise here, too.
First, it would be an admission that the EU cannot manage its own household. Second, the largest contributor to the IMF is Uncle Sam.
Why should America bail out Greece, when the EU is larger and richer and did not help bail out California in 2009? The stimulus bill did that in 2009, to which Europe contributed nothing.
Where Greece is at today, however, we shall all arrive tomorrow.
In every Western nation, government is growing beyond the capacity of taxpayers to bear. Deficits and debt are surging. Not enough children are being born to replace parents. The immigrant poor who consume more than they contribute are coming to take the empty places. Seniors and elderly are growing as a share of the population. Companies are saying goodbye to the West and moving offshore to low-wage lands.
The West begins to look like yesterday, while the East begins to look like tomorrow.
The West is approaching a crisis of solvency and of democracy. We shall see if democracy, which grew popular lavishing benefits upon all, is strong enough to start clawing them away. Or will democracy try to keep piling the burden on the producers until they rebel or depart?
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Pat,
Right on, again. This is where we are heading. The declining birthrates happens to be a huge piece of the problem. As governments grow and populations don’t, you have to have labor from immigration, which in many cases produces less in revenue. This is a huge issue that will face America. Europe has a huge issue….
White Europeans are aging shrinking and dying around the world and they are being taken over by Africans, Asians and Latinos.
Whites are busy watching 5 hours of TV, I-pods and spectator sports and wasting their time on shoes, clothes and selfish desires, while neglecting their families, wives and refusing to have children.
White couples waste their money and energy on ceaseless materialism while Blacks, browns and Asians enjoy their women.
Wow this is so depressing because it is so true.
Once off-shore banksters run your currencies and markets, lend you the fiat monies to run your socialist states, you are captured, theirs, to do with what they want. The IMF structures financial “aid” for third world countries like the feudal barons of old, charging outrageous interest, forcing the countries to turn over their resources and take orders. What do the Greeks, the Spanish, Portugal, Ireland, and you may as well add Iceland, have that the banksters want? It’s not cheap labor, and its not natural resources. How about acquiesence to the global agenda — of carbon tyranny and taxes, total de-insdustrialization — move all factories to third world locations where labor is almost free and where carbon-restrictions and responsibility is waived. How about forced innoculations, RFID implants, cameras in the bathroom, random blood taking, genital photo-records at airports? For starters. PIGS, indeed!
“The West begins to look like yesterday, while the East begins to look like tomorrow.”
I wouldn’t bet on the East. Their birthrates are even lower. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are dying countries. Due to one child policy, China will have a HUGE aging population which will have to be taken care of by fewer and fewer young people. And if the Western economy goes, so does China’s–eventually.
Overall the Asian birthrates are still very high. Look at Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, papua, and even china. The lower Chinese birth rates are only in big cities.
India has massive birthrates and so does islam.
Whites will be exterminated by the end of this century.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:IDN&dl=en&hl=en&q=indonesia+fertility+rate#met=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:IDN:BGD:PAK
My guess Europe(at least Western Europe) will continue on as a kind of Afro-Muslim Empire in about 50-60 yrs. It will become like parts of North Africa.
US will eventually become a Afro-Mexicana since blacks and Mexicans have the highest birthrates. Due to higher birthrates, black Democrats will outnumber whites in most of the Southern States. Also, with the rise of interracial coupling–mostly black male and white female–, there will be more mixed-race children who will see themselves as black-than-white due to the one-drop rule and whiteness-being-associated-with-’racism’.
Sad but likely.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:IDN&dl=en&hl=en&q=indonesia+fertility+rate#met=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:RUS:PAK:NGA:DEU
One bright side to total economic collapse in the US is the possibility of another revolution. Buchanan’s campaign in 1988 started with the words ‘let the bloodbath begin.’
As a Greek, you are on the money with Greece and its Socialist-Communist run government. Here in the USA, Greeks have families and go to church. In Greece, no one wants to get married, have more then one kid and go to church. Greece is being overrun by illegals mostly Muslims from Africa and Middle East. The conservative movement in Greece is gaining new air under its new leader Antonis Samaras and LAOS leader Giorgios Karatzaferis. However, you have Socialists like Papandreou coming from neopotistic family. Papandreou’s father and grandfathers were former Prime Ministers of Greece…both Socialists of course. I’m glad you said like it is because what you said was true…and this is coming from a Greek. We in the diaspora know how corrupt the bueaurcracy and government is. It is run by people who use the public sector to enrich their own and family’s pockets.
European populations did not lose their faith as a result of two world wars; rather the two world wars were a result of the loss of faith beforehand. Their churches stopped proclaiming the gospel well over a century ago.
Dear Pat,
Please do not call the Europeans, the United States’ only allies, for pigs. It’s offensive, and, worst of all, not funny.
Sincerely,
Bjorn, a proud European.
Bjorn: Pat made it clear that PIGS is an acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain. He did NOT say that all Euros were pigs. PIGS are not pigs.
I’m pushing 30 and I’m not married. I’m so deep into debt there’s no way I will have children any time soon. And then with the way so many American women are, black and white, there’s no pt.
Why risk having her leave me and take the kids and force me to pay her money so she can sleep with other men in my house?
No thanks. I’ll leave that for the suckers.
You want higher birthrates — restrict womens’ rights. Works in Muslim countries.
If you don’t — you’ll have more of this.
And I hate to say it but a 200 dollar hooker solves a lot of problems and is cheaper and less stressful than a nagging bipolar moron who’s only taking you for your money and health care benefits.
Call me cynical but until there’s serious reform of the system, birthrates will only go further down. I’m not about to sacrifice the next 20 years of my life, both in terms of freedom and wealth to help some female bum live high off the hog off my back. And there are a lot of men out there just like me.
Smart enough to see the system for what it is.
Couple of points on Ireland Pat, firstly we have a right wing government and one of the most free markets on Earth,
unemployment isnt generous here, health care isnt universal, in fact its darn expensive, and Ireland doesnt have early retirement or comfortable pensions as my 73 year old Butcher father can testify to!
Ireland also has a very young population, younger than other western countries, not a dying one.
But PIIGS are becoming like pigs, inasmuch as they are tagged, weighed, fed, birth-controlled, implanted, consolidated, trained, drugged, kicked around, cared for, and fattened for eventual slaughter — to help mother earth, of course.
Did I forget naked body scanned?
Posted same under “Ride the PIGs or Saddle,…”
at aipnews.com
http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=12125&posts=2