Greece and Irresponsible Economics

With so many countries racking up debt, it's time for citizens to grow up and cough up.

Athenian mobs are raging in the streets at the audacity of European big wigs who are hesitating to bail out their creaky economy. “We’re not responsible for this mess,” the protester shrieks. “And we shouldn’t have to pay for it!”

The sentiment evokes memories of that famous Saturday Night Live cowbell sketch, in which Christopher Walken tells his confused clients, “Babies, before we're done here, y'all be wearing gold-plated diapers.” When it comes to paying our way, supposedly rational citizens instantly transform into raging two-year-old wards of an increasingly desperate nanny state.

No one wants to pay the bills anymore. Or more to the point, they think someone else ought to be paying the bills.

Greeks are furious that their pensions and social programs are on the chopping block. And with French public debt at nearly 84 per cent of GDP, Germany not far behind, and most other Euro nations in even worse shape, the whole zone seems to be in a state of denial. With the world just coming out of a recession, this attitude problem is not good for any of us.

It’s not just a Euro-centric psychological malady, either. Plenty of deluded souls on this side of the Atlantic have the same weird notion that someone else ought to be taking care of the cheque. Canadian national and household debt is at record levels. South of the border, the problem is even worse, and the Americans can’t even blame their debts on a welfare state, unless you mean corporate welfare.

Where’s the shame? Where is the national sense of humiliation?

To get a sense of the psychology at work here, it’s useful to contrast it with the South Korean gold drive of 1998. Tens of thousands of South Korean citizens answered their government’s call to sell or donate their gold so that the nation could put its finances in order.

The gold drive didn’t solve South Korea’s financial crisis. But it did psychologically mobilize the public, impressing upon them the urgency of the situation and inculcating a feeling that they could be part of the solution.

Something like the gold drive would be simply unthinkable here. But some sort of national action must be taken.

The elected leader of every western nation ought to tell it straight to the people who elected them:

“Look, friends, we’re mortgaged to the hilt. We can’t pay our bills. We’ve been acting like first-class moochers, and it’s gotten beyond embarrassing. Pretty much the only people who can still lend to us are human-rights-stomping totalitarians and oil-rich exporters of jihad. We’re going to have to cut back… Way back. This is going to hurt. But the party is over.”

No one likes paying bills. But it’s time to start acting like grown-ups.