European nations believe the rich of their nations should be taxed to provide for those less fortunate. A noble idea and one that seems to work only in fantasy books. The idea is to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator so no one can complain about the rich. Now some idiot thinks this would work in the United States of America, this is a very bad idea. Look at Europe as an example.
With our free market system we have a horrible unemployment rate of 4% because the evil rich just keep getting richer on the backs of the poor. Contrast this with most European nations that have unemployment at a moderate 11 to 21%. That’s right folks we have twelve million people out of work out of three hundred million people in the nation all because the rich won’t stop getting richer. While in France once you hire an employee you can not fire him unless he breaks the law such as robbery of your business. If he fails to show up for work you still have to pay him and if he hurts your business you still have to pay him. Business owners stopped hiring people and the people they did hire were very carefully looked at. But since it becomes impossible to hire all the people you need to run your business you have to limit your profits to what you can afford to make. Businesses can’t expand because that would require hiring more staff that may or may not work. On the other end of the spectrum you have the French government. They believe it is right and correct to take all but a bare minimum from the greedy business owner in order to pay for the massive unemployment they created. You can’t start a new business because the start up costs is prohibitive, not the usual start up costs but the taxes that have to be paid before they are allowed to start earning. Usually it takes five years to get into the black just from that taxes charged.
In Japan they used to guarantee employment for life as well as free health care. The cost of this is 40 to 50% income taxes. To sell land the government charges 100% sales tax. So if you pay a dollar for a piece of land the government gets a dollar. The economy is so messed up because of their culture which is why they go into depression about every twenty years. Here is how it works, a secretary, I use this example because I was living in Japan and read about this case and as shocked as I was I understood that they would never become a world financial power. This secretary made the equivalent of 9 thousand a year she was issued a credit card with a limit of twenty thousand dollars. She charged 36 thousand dollars that year so she could wear the latest fashions. This is where the economy takes the big hit. Because her family is an honorable family credit card companies can not cut off her use of the card, they can not even sue her for the charges she made and can not pay. The best they can do is telling her father that she is in debt and he should clear it up because he is an honorable man. If this fails they have to turn to organized crime, (yakuza) which will pay off the debt and then collect the money their way at 30% interest.
Because the yakuza is not an honorable profession they can demand payment within the culture. They can harass her and her place of employment. Culture dictates that since she is employed for life the companies honor is tied to its employees so the company will pay the money to save face and then deduct the money from her pay. So far so good the culture has its checks and balances but the secretary now with reduced earnings continues to use the credit card to pay for food as well as new clothes. She racks up another thirty thousand dollars in debt. The yakuza takes the debt the company pays the bill the company is going broke because she is not the only employee doing this. Ten years ago the corporations started laying people off because they could no longer afford to keep the dead weight around and the next depression began.
The Japanese government for their help makes things worse; they have price controls in place that keep staples at a reasonable price and provide reasonable profits for the farmers and some local businesses, but foreign goods are taxed to make up the difference. A melon costs 75 dollars, a cup of coffee cost 5 dollars unless you go to Starbucks which means a cup will cost 15 dollars. American rice is cheaper than japans rice but because of tariffs American rice is triple the cost to the consumer. All of this to provide free health care. It does not sound all that free to me.
Europe is in the toilet economically hell most of the world is in the economic toilet. Yet our politicians on one side want to emulate their way of doing things. For fifty years the European way has not worked but these idiots want it to not work over here as well. I spoke with a Brit two days ago and he railed at me because I believe that people should pay for their own health care. It is the government’s job to do that he told me. The cost Great Briton pays for free health care is high unemployment, high taxes for those that are employed to pay what they call a benefit we call welfare. So what if it takes you six months to have an abscessed tooth removed or three years to have a knee replacement operation. Free health care is so good that Britons and Canadians fly to the United States to have the surgery, people pull out bad teeth with pliers at home because the pain is so bad and they can’t wait six weeks to have the procedure done but we have a screwed up system as far as he is concerned. Then I asked him why he is working in America and he said it was the only place he could get a job. Point made!
