Newsweek Magazine featured an article this week about the rapid decline of Great Britain. Emblematic of the problem for Britannia who ruled the waves, is the once mighty empire is now down to a single aircraft carrier that is being moth balled because Britain can’t afford to keep it at sea. Unemployment is rampant as the government, which employs more than 40% of the population, can’t meet payroll. Massive layoffs are occurring across the country just as social services are being cut back. Did you know the second largest employer in the world is the British National Health Service? There is obviously something wrong here.Right now Britain manufactures….nothing!!! Over the past 30 years, just about every industry in the country has shut down. It makes no ships! It makes no cars! It makes little steel! It mines little coal. The industries that still exist in England are owned by the French, the Swiss, the Germans, the Chinese. The country is in dire straits.
The decline is rooted in two world wars. Britain was victorious in both, but went broke in one and was nearly destroyed in the other. When World War II ended, the British promptly threw out the victorious Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and installed a socialist regime that nationalized all of the industry while granting huge amounts of power to the labor unions. It was a recipe for disaster.
Margaret Thatcher tried to reverse the trend, and it seemed to work for awhile. But the demand for excessive social services remained high, and so did the taxes. Business drifted slowly but surely away to more fertile ground…more business friendly countries. Like the United States, Britain tried to replace manufacturing with “service” jobs, and London rivaled New York as the major world financial center. The 2008 debt ridden economic collapse put an end to that. Britain is in trouble.
The British only recently have adopted the Mark Knows It All Rule of Economics: the wealth of a nation is measured by how many refrigerators it makes, not by how many hamburgers it flips. The Brits are seriously hoping as the government lays off tens of thousands of people, somehow private enterprise will reignite in the country, and the private sector will hire those the government is laying off. You know… the “if you build it, they will come” theory. I don’t think it is going to work.
Britain killed the goose that laid the golden egg. And that is what we are doing in the United States. We have reached the precipice of Margaret Thatcher’s prophecy: Sooner or later, you will run out of other people’s money. Guess what folks…all gone!!!!!!
You can argue that the two countries are different, have diverse histories. But at the end of the day, the problem is the same. Manufacturing is not infinite. It has limits. Do things to kill it, it will die. It happened in Britain. It is happening here. President Obama hasn’t figured that out yet.
America needs to learn from Britain’s cautionary tale. If we don’t start getting our debt under control; if we don’t institute domestic and foreign policies that promote American business growth; if we don’t get move quickly to develop our natural resources; if we don’t bring down the number of government employees, we will be in trouble. Just like Great Britain.
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TRUMP/OBAMA/AND THE ROYAL"WE"
If anyone has any doubt about the efficacy of a possible Trump run for the presidency, just look at what he forced the President of the United States to do. Obama blinked. For the first time in his entire presidency, Obama was forced to do something he didn’t want to do. He could have released the birth certificate 2 ½ years ago when first brought up by Hillary Clinton. He deliberately chose not to. He was mollycoddled by the press as many members of the press attacked Trump, while not asking the simple question to Barry Boy…why didn’t you release this 2 ½ years ago and spare all the aggravation. Oprah asked the question as Obama appeared on her show campaigning and raising money. He chose not to answer it. Score: Trump 1- Obama O.
But the bigger story, and one that is being missed in the press, is Obama suddenly using the “Royal We.” Here is a guy who raised the use of personal pronouns to an art form. Everything was I, Me, My…never, never, never did he ever use a collective term to describe his policies or his administration!!! Anything he has done usually started with the phrase “I have instructed my czar to report to me findings related to….fill in the blank.”
All of a sudden, it is “we have important things to do”, “we decided to release the certificate to free us to do the country’s work.” In fact, in all of the appearances and statements he made yesterday, I only heard him slip up on the new pronoun once reverting to “I”.
I am glad Obama made his birth certificate available just like every President. I am also glad that his handlers have finally realized that “I” and “Me” works fine when things are going great…but in bad economic times, he needs to invoke the rest of the country in this most narcissistic of American presidencies.
And to Donald Trump…"we" thank you!!!!
DONALD TRUMP'S F-BOMB RANT
Show me where he's wrong!
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