by Jack Lee
If something can’t last – it will stop. Who doesn’t understand that? Well, we have a welfare state that spends more than it takes in, that can’t last… and it will stop. Hardly news to our post scripts readers. This is a train wreck just waiting to happen and it will…there’s no doubt about it.
We’ve created mega-institutions within government that we call entitlement programs and as our empire starts to collapse, (first signs will be cities going into bankruptcy and states with deficits) then we’ll be forced to start chipping away at those entitlements that many of us have come to depend on for our day to day existence.
When big government fails it’s going to create a culture shock from coast to coast for those on the dole who believe that it couldn’t happen, that government had an endless supply of cotton money and that it was simply too big too fail! And along with that new reality will come a great void, an emptiness, because of the entitlement mindset relied too heavily on government do it and saw no other way. This great void lasts for as long as it needs to last. It will be an indeterminate time chaos, but it will not be forever.
Sadly many government dependents will be lost, left to wander aimlessly without hope and without change, suffering the extremely painful withdrawals that comes when Great Ice Cream Machine breaks down. But, as dark as things may appear there will inevitably come a time when the light bulb in the head goes off and people start to figure out that help from the government is not coming and it’s left up to them to sink or swim.
The longer we put off the absolutely necessary reforms to a massively bloated bureaucracy and make those much needed cuts to our reckless and irresponsible over-spending the more chaos that is sure to follow in the wake of a financial collapse and the longer it will take for the start of our recovery.
Recovery will come and it will come in the form of capitalism. Along with it will be the restoration of an old class that once built this country. It was called the working poor, those entry level workers, and they will replace today’s welfare recipients. Those who can work – must work. The reality of the real world will hit them so hard they will know that able bodied people have no other choice and it will be good for them and for the economy. Because they will become productive members of society, earning their way and contributing to the the greater society and the nation.
The lessons that will follow this collapse and the re-awakening will be many. Work is good for our collective character. We will re-learn the value of work, the value of money and the satisfaction having earned it! Work breeds it’s set of ethics that nothing else can. It instills pride on those willing to meet the new challenges and understand that all work is honorable and there is ladder to be climbed for more rewards. It’s said that action begets action, just like inaction begets inaction. We’ll put that to the test and the rewards that follow hard work and self-improvement will more than justify the sacrifice. There will be much less idle time, much less recreational time and as a result many selfish indulgences and misbehavior’s will have no place in the new working America.
Work ethics will replace that failed notions of wealth redistribution. The population will have many needs and that challenge will be met with new ideas and innovations.
Just as sure what we are doing will collapse (unless we begin immediate reforms) we will see a working America that will rise from the ashes and no segment of our society will be left behind to languish in the remnants of the old Nanny State. Necessity is the Mother of invention!
Work will happen (its the only sure way out) and it will happen across the board, in the prisons that will become places of hard labor, it will happen in the big housing projects of Chicago and Detroit that were almost destroyed by their uncaring occupants as soon as they were built. Reconstruction, restoration and rehabilitation will replace many things…the malaise, malingering and much of the crime we have today. This will most assuredly be immediately felt by those second, third and fourth generation welfare recipients who thought having babies… was a job! The reality of work will happen to many who thought government and wealth redistribution was the answer to every problem and every need.
Futurist Author Kevin Williamson says our salvation will come when we start turning to competitive business and not the government. He’s sees the crash coming soon and that the great void left by it’s implosion will eventually be filled by entrepreneurs and capitalism. He cites, for example the cell phone of the 1980s that cost almost ten thousand dollars was the size and weight of a brick and today in 2013 it’s a fraction of the cost and look what it can do. Compare that to the government schools of the 1980s and fast forward to the schools of today. Think of what we might have today if government had been in charge of making cell phones?