Opus 2015-181: Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts

My wife informed me that her sources tell her the banks are going to shut down.  I don’t remember the timeline but it seemed like it would be this weekend.  If that is the case, it is too late to do anything about it.

It was probably too late anyway.

What is stirring this concern is the crisis in Greece.  I am sure you have heard about it in some way.  What we are seeing in Greece is simply a harbinger of a world wide trend.  Everyone in the world wants to live better than they can afford.  We want to have things that cost more than we can pay and we want them now.  And we expect someone else to pay for it.

The list is long.  It includes things like prime health care, free to all.  At the other end are the people buying steak with their food stamps.  In between are all the things we put on our credit cards and pay off with minimum payments. 

My wife and I go out to dinner.  We split, get the specials, skip the beverage and find a way to keep the price down.  It still costs more than I want to spend, but we can afford it.  We look around at families with three children ordering exotic dishes and the adults paying for mixed drinks.  We wonder how they can afford it.  They can’t but they do it anyway.

Greece doesn’t want to practice austerity.  They are used to being the child and expecting someone else to bail them out.  They will have tantrums in the street and get violent.  I can almost see them all putting on those bumper stickers that say, “I want, I want, I want...” 

The problem is, we are all Greece.  We often hear in history class how much we owe to Greece in terms of philosophy and architecture.  Who knew that we would also pattern our economic lives after them.

Eventually the house of cards will come crashing down.  It has happened before.  It will happen again.  The scary thing about this type of crash is that it allows tyrants to take charge and liberty goes out the window.

Stay tuned. 

homo unius libri