-By Gary Krasner
Why must we work? That was the question my cousin Bob asked me over 10 years ago.
Bob was a retired teacher. A brilliant teacher, in fact. Won lots of awards. When I visited him upstate, he got into this rant about having had to work all his life to live comfortably. I was dumbstruck. He was supposed to be the smart guy in the family. How could he not know the answer?
I didn’t understand as much about economics then, as I do now. But even then I couldn’t comprehend his idea that people shouldn’t have to work. Had he asked me that today, I would have used Greece as an example. Or Eddie.
People must work. They must produce something of value. They must invest or sell their labor. They must do this work for income. My neighbor Eddie for 25 yrs lived with his mom all that time and never worked. Never, unless he needed to spend money. Never saved money. Not a dime. I warned him plenty, but he never listened to me. Then 2 years ago his mom died and he was forced onto the streets. But saved eventually by the welfare system he used to be on with mom, but this time they’re making him work for the booty.
Sometimes I ask my 67 year-old building super–a native from Columbia–how Eddie is doing now? Eddie is in the Bronx at some homeless shelter. But even my super, barely fluent in English, would always correctly pinpoint his core problem: “Eddie? He no work.” That summarized his life and destiny.
Nations similarly need to work. They need to produce and sell their goods and services to other nations. But somehow the Greek political system or culture created a people of leisure. If there were any investors or workaholics in that country, they’ve been leaving in droves. Why work for people who themselves do little or no work? As Thatcher said about the flaw in socialism, “Eventually, you run out of other people’s money.”
Talking about collectivist, central command economies, their work and investment is low because of poor individual incentives. Individual. No one wants to work for his fellow worker. They kill themselves for self and family. The soviet system might have chugged along a bit longer had they been content to being a small, less ambitious nation, as opposed to challenging the productive powerhouse of the US.
Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) famously said in Wall Street–a film made by communist Oliver Stone–“greed is good.” More accurately, greed is necessary. It motivates investors and incentivizes ambition and risk. Ironically, if you look at US balance of payments and debt, Russians and Chinese are doing capitalism better than we are under Obama—an Islamophile communist.
Getting back to Greece, it appears that the EU will eventually be missing a nation soon. The culture of leisure is hard to shake, especially with pliant–ready to please the masses–leaders running the show there.
As my super might observe, “Greece? They no work.”