Is the U.S. Like Greece?

Is the U.S. Like Greece?

Daniel Greenwood: Is the United States Like Greece?

Is the United States like Greece? Yes, but not in the way that the social insecurity advocates say. First, its affluent citizens refuse to pay their fair share of the costs of running the government, and no one has been willing to make them do so. In that lies the beginnings of fiscal crisis. Second, it has an overvalued currency, which makes jobs leak abroad and domestic production internationally uncompetitive, thus hurting the middle class.

Like Greece, we are in serious danger if we do not manage to get our economic elite under control and move the economy in directions that improve life for ordinary people. When the rich discover that they can use government to get richer still, without having to produce useful goods and services or having to share their wealth with those who actually do the work, inequality rises and economic growth slows. No point in growing the pie if you can just take a bigger piece.

Like Greece, a symptom of our problem is the ease with which the international finance industry fleeces us; unlike Greece, we are in no danger of default and neither the IMF nor the bond market are pressuring us to dismantle basic governmental functions essential to middle class life in order to bail out international banks and other creditors.
Unfortunately, also unlike Greece, we have major domestic political movements seeking to do that even without external pressure.