Sunday, November 22, 2009

Don't Cry for Me, Am-er-I-ca

Great post here by Doug Ross on the warning afforded by what was the wealthiest country (GDP per head) a century ago: Argentina, now a veritable basket case.

Government entitlement programs are (compulsory) Ponzi schemes - Bernie Madoff on steroids; early adopters get the benefits (hence Peron's populatiry) and later arrivals/generations get the bills.

It takes very little cultural/economic sophistication on the part of a population to enable the market to work; yet to guard against such things as government run Ponzi schemes it requires the majority of a population to be very sophisticated - a depth of character that can be easily lost in a generation, as Ronald Reagan warned.

A lesson of history we either learn or repeat.

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