When a society has been told for years that it can have something for nothing, as the UK has, its entire mentality is crippled:
What is disturbing is that the British people seem unwilling to face minimal belt-tightening. Even professors in higher education are balloting to strike, demanding a continuation of boom-time pay raises. “You have the best minds in the country planning to go on strike for 8pc. People are miles away from understanding what is needed.”Polling data shows that 48pc of the public are against any spending cuts and only 20pc see the need for retrenchment. Britons appear to assume that the “fantastic growth in public spending” over the last decade has become an entitlement.
It’s laughable, Richard Fernandez says, but look at this:
A woman arrived at the [Burlington Coat Factory] store in a Hummer limo, announcing that she’d won the lottery and offering to cover tabs totaling up to $500…. Before the hoax was even revealed, two dozen police officers were called in to quell the unrest sparked by the woman…As cashiers rang sale after sale, Brown left in her limo to withdraw funds to cover the large scale shopping spree — but returned empty handed. The situation predictably worsened, with the large crowds expecting free things and not willing to leave empty handed. Shoppers began throwing merchandise on the floor and looting.
It’s not too different from how health-care “reform” will play out:
A careful reading of the evidence suggests that the Baucus bill will add as much as $376 billion to the federal deficit through 2019. And that figure understates the full impact of the bill on the budget. If the big-spending parts of the proposal started next year rather than in 2014, the fiscal damage would be much greater.At face value, the Baucus bill seems to be close to what the president ordered. According to the CBO, the bill gives coverage to 29 million uninsured Americans for less than $900 billion while simultaneously reducing the deficit. The problem is that the bill counts as savings large cuts to Medicare providers that will almost certainly never happen.
The most blatant example is the annual cut in fees paid by Medicare to physicians. The cuts started out small, about 5% a year, but even that was unsustainable. To “solve” the political problem without having to admit to a big increase in the deficit, Congress has given doctors a series of one-year fixes. The foregone payment reductions add up, and next year Medicare is supposed to slash doctor’s fees 21%. Clearly, that will not happen.