I know you aren’t going to enjoy today’s piece as much as you did last week’s. It’s a tough act to follow ‘Try to Remember’ with its good lines, tight harmonies, and the imagination of you singing along with the volume turned up and the windows closed. I wonder what you would have done if the kids or grandkids had walked in!
But with the hot days of summer maybe mostly behind us and mosquito season slowing down a bit, it would seem that the smart people of the world would start thinking straight again. If that is so, however, it hasn’t caught on in France, where the National Assembly has just voted to throw out their prime minister because he wanted to bring their spending more into line with what they can afford, rather than uncontrolled deficit spending and increasing the national debt.
Now, why would we care here in our small town on the other side of the world when nobody else seems to care about what goes on in France? And I would agree with that most of the time, except I am a bit alarmed when the inmates appear to be in charge of the asylum.
I think it matters to everyone in the free world because it seems to me that prolonged deficit spending will eventually lead to interest on debt that the government cannot afford to pay, and which would also lead to an inability to fund services that governments have traditionally provided. And then it would follow that the people would turn on the government. And when people in the free world turn against their governments, that can bring democratic governments being replaced by socialist or totalitarian governments with few human rights. And I think most people in the world would rather not have what they have in China, Russia or North Korea. I say that, not really knowing what kind of government they have in Russia these days.
And it really all boils down to the question of whether or not there is such a thing as a free lunch.
Those who feel there should be are those who are likely not to see the link between democracy and human freedoms and might be willing to trade freedom for the free lunch.
But it couldn’t happen here in Canada, could it!?
Did it happen in Germany before World War I and World War II?
It did, and with the German people thinking Hitler was a hero!
And it could happen here, too.
Those of us who have lived since the end of the Second War have known nothing but increasing freedom. The idea that we could lose it is foreign to our way of thinking. So we don’t think about it; we don’t talk about it. And the French prime minister who dared to talk about it got himself thrown out. But in one last opportunity to implore his countrymen to use their heads, he told them, “You have the power to topple the government, but you don’t have the power to erase reality.” It was kind of like saying, “You can go ahead and be stupid if you want to, but you may destroy the country in the process.” He knows there are no free lunches, even in a country like France with its long history and 70 million people.
It’s interesting how it’s so common to see protests of all kinds on our TV screens every night, yet we never see one demanding that our government only spend what we can afford and thereby protect our future. British Columbia still has a fairly good credit rating, and we don’t pay as much interest as some jurisdictions do, but it’s the trend that should scare us. The trend is always in favour of continued deficit spending. We have found out how important trading relationships are; fiscal management is even more important.
The silly thing about it is that, personally, we don’t usually spend more money than we have, yet our governments always do. If you or I earned $100 in a month, had rent of $30, a car payment of $15, food costs of $40, totalling $85, we wouldn’t likely be buying a second car with a payment of another $30. But governments seem to.
If you noticed the date today, it is September 11, the now, unfortunately famous, 9 / 11. It could be thought, reasonably, that today’s piece should have been on 9 / 11. Maybe it should have been, yet as we look at our world going forward, the character and strength and courage of our democratic governments may be much more important than we might think. Will we take the right path of fiscal responsibility, or will we spend our way into oblivion?
If we follow France’s example, it could be scary. We should take it as a lesson.
