...you could change the name and it could be the United States in a few years. We are headed in that direction at a breakneck pace.

Today's news reports, an article in The Christian Science Monitor is a good one, are beginning to tell the story from inside Greece...

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europ...sures/(page)/2

The news articles are beginning to tell the story of how the lives of Greeks will be changing as the result of their profligate spending and increasing reliance on government-funded entitlements in recent years, just like us.

The government says it will have to cut $38 billion from state spending over the next three years – that’s equivalent to 13 percent of gross domestic product.

To put that in perspective, a similar cut here in the U.S. would amount to a cut of about $1.8 trillion over three years. That would be a cut of about 16% of the annual federal budget, or a little more than $600 billion per year. Looking at it a different way, that big a cut to what we call "discretionary" spending in the federal budget would amount to about a 35% cut in federal spending for everything other than Social Security, Medicare and defense. Think about a 1/3 cut in federal government spending--think of the government services that you use and rely on every day that would very likely be dramatically downgraded or eliminated by a 1/3 spending cut.

Initially, Greek government workers will be hit the hardest, but workers in the private sector will be similarly effected. They have already had two rounds of pay cuts and a third now scheduled will be even bigger. Pensions will be cut and government workers won't be permitted to retire. But everyone will feel the impact. The sale tax will also be increased, to 23 percent and income taxes for both the wealthiest Greeks and corporations will also be dramatically raised. The IMF and the other EU countries providing the bailout funding have told the Greeks that they will have to dramatically cut their defense spending to "maintenance" levels only. The money will simply not be provided for defense spending beyond that level.

The Greeks are rioting and striking, but in the end they will have no choice. It's accept the conditions that come along with the bailout money provided by other counties or permit Greece to simply go bankrupt and have no money or no government whatsoever.

Think about it folks.

Thanks once again for a reminder of what happens when a country is governed by military communism and then a socialist democratic party. Let's hope and pray we can stop our country from continuing down this path toward expanded government in time.

Originally Posted by bkcunningham1

Thanks once again for a reminder of what happens when a country is governed by military communism and then a socialist democratic party. Let's hope and pray we can stop our country from continuing down this path toward expanded government in time.

Amen

I honestly think that, in this ocuntry, we have to first decide what we're going to spend money on, set priorities and then figure out funding levels. This "every pig at the trough at the same time" mentality is going to be like a herd of starving deer - all will die instead of jsut the weak and sick.