Lessons Liberals Can’t Or Won’t Learn

Randel Hoven, the great number cruncher at American Thinker, writes Why Doesn’t  the World Imitate the U.S.? Hoven, in an attempt to get as close as possible to an apples and apples comparison, uses Gross Domestic Product per capita Purchasing Power Parity for comparisons of other nations with the U.S. He tells us that in the U.S. we have a GDP per capita of )myy four and dollar sing key is not cooperating this morning) forty-nine thousand dollars and that there are ten nations that do better than us.

• Liechtenstein ($143,900).
• Qatar ($104,300)
• Luxembourg ($81,100)
• Bermuda ($69,900)
• Singapore ($60,500)
• Jersey ($57,000)
• Falkland Islands ($55,400)
• Norway ($54,200)
• Brunei ($50,000)
• Hong Kong ($49,800)

As Randall Hoven points out all the countries in that list have very small populations. These countries, also, are either oil rich or tax heavens. So, when you illuminate these anomalies, the U.S. is the richest country in the world. If we go down to a second tier of countries that are within 90% as rich as us, we find only two, Guernsey, another tax haven, and the United Arab Emirates, another small oil rich country. Hoven continues looking at lower tier countries:

So of all the nations in the world with populations exceeding 10 million, only two are even close to us: the Netherlands (87% as rich) and Canada (84% as rich).  If you are curious, Germany is 78% as rich as us, the U.K. is 75%, France is 73%, and the EU average is 70%.  The rest of the world, meaning 83% of the nations on earth, is even less wealthy than that.

So, what makes the European Democratic Socialism so attractive to American liberal/progressives. Hoven points out that their wealth distribution is skewed to the bottom half of earners relative to that of the American cut throat capitalists. He then goes on to answer the question he posed in his title.  He makes a strong case that they need to imitate the U.S. because the world is getting a free ride on the U.S. coat tails. By that, he does not mean that they don’t have to spend as much on defense because America does the heavy lifting on defense. Hoven says that is only a small part of the reason. His argument is that the  rest of the world benefits from America’s cut throat capitalist innovations. They just copy the innovations that America generates. Interesting! This is a great article and I highly recommend it to you. In the end, Hoven makes a very astute observation:

Once the U.S. completes its transition to becoming just another European country, who will be the new U.S. off whom we all get to freeload?  No one.  We are the Golden Goose.  Kill us, and the whole party is over.

Randall Hoven is right on the money, as usual. But, you know what? We don’t have to look outside our borders to find examples of liberal/progressive failures. We have plenty of examples right here at home. We bloggers, for good reason, tend to focus primarily on how  our runaway federal government is destroying the America we have known and loved. The truth is that the economic engine we all depend on for our sustenance is being erroded from both the top and the bottom. One need only look at the hollowed out shell of the once great city of Detroit to see the end product of progressive/socialist policies. Walter Russell Mead has some interesting indifgt on this subject in his recent article News From Obama’s Home State.

Three states form the base of Democratic political power in the United States: California, New York and Illinois. All three states are locked in an accelerating economic, demographic and social decline; all three hope that they can stave off looming disaster at home by exporting the policies that have ruined them to the rest of the country. (Bold added)

Walter Russell Mead is a very smart fellow, but  I don’t always agree with him. I don’t agree with his words that I put in bold. Exporting? I tend to think that the “little blues” like to emulate the “big blues”. Whatever! Mead is not wrong in pointing at the blue state fail of California, Illinois, and New York. His article focuses on Obama’s home state of Illinois. It is a good choice. Illinois is a disaster. I f you want to know the details of the Illinois fail, please read Mr. Meads article. It is good!

The point I want to make about the two articles I linked today is this. Our American liberals are so damn arrogant; they are so sure that their vision of how societies should function, they can not or will bot recognize where their policies have and are failing.  They can’t see the fail that is taking place in Europe and they can’t even recognize the fail in their own blue states. Does anybody believe the governments of California or Illinois are going to change? Not likely. Those that govern are blind! However, the people in those states are not all blind. Those that can are voting with  their feet. But, the question that Randall Hoven raised is a haunting one. If we let the golden goose die, then what? Voting with our feet will not be an option.

Well, now you know what I’m thing. What are your thoughts?