Socialists could be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous. Witness the latest nonsense as purveyed by admitted socialist, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Sanders is pushing to have the work week reduced from the now pretty much standard 40 hours, to 32. Of course, there would be no reduction in pay.
You think you are witnessing price inflation now? Just imagine what would happen if people had their work week and, in theory, productivity, reduced 20 percent, but still drew the same pay.
The people selling you services or products aren’t going to eat that 20 percent; most couldn’t even if they wanted to do so.
This means that you will see 20-percent price increases, give or take, across the board. I hope the workers enjoy that 8-hour reduction in the work week, because it’s going to cost them big whenever they need to purchase a good or service.
There was a time when nonsense such as that being dispensed by Sanders would be laughed off as no more than an absurd diversion. Not so, now.
This is the era of the free lunch. And, while anyone with a basic knowledge of economics realizes there is no such thing because someone eventually must pay the tab, too many are willing to let Uncle Sam pick up said tab.
Why not? He’s already paying billions to support illegal immigrants and more billions to support our chronic domestic underclass. Throw in billions to keep the stooge Zelenskyy in charge in Ukraine and billions (trillions?) spent on other government handout projects. Then, to paraphrase the quote of the late Senator Everett Dirksen, speaking decades back about troublesome government debt, a trillion here, a trillion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
That’s real BORROWED money. Uncle Sam is just like the typical American consumer, supporting an overly lavish lifestyle with a credit card. It’s just on a grander scale, with Uncle Sam running up debt at the rate of a trillion or so dollars every 100 days.
But Sanders’ proposal to shorten the work week will strike a chord with the give-me types, ranging from college students who inexplicably didn’t understand taking out a loan meant the obligation to repay it, to the people who line up in my area in $50,000-plus vehicles to collect free food handouts just because they can.
I know one guy who tries to pick up as many as four rations of the handout food, that he might distribute it to friends and family who also can afford to buy their own food.
Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister of Great Britain, identified the essential flaw of socialism when she noted its main problem was “eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
In the case of the United States, there will be a come to Jesus moment when our debt will not be bought without a dramatic rise in the interest rate paid.
Debt levels already are worrisome. A few months back the federal debt (not including current deficits associated with future Social Security and Medicare benefits) was more than $33 trillion, or about 123 percent of our annual gross domestic product.
Eventually, we face the Hobson’s choice of either paying the higher interest rates, which we cannot afford to do, or reducing spending, which the masses in this handout nation will not accept.
We’re bumbling steadily toward that time of reckoning. Ideas such as Sanders’ reduced work week would only hasten its arrival.
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Sam Ross Jr's site 