From Der Speigel:
The people who could ultimately give Greece the coup de grace are not the kind to throw stones or Molotov cocktails, and they have yet to torch any cars. Instead, they are people like 60-year-old beverage distributor Angelos Belitsakos, people who might soon turn into a real problem for the economically unstable country. Feeling cornered, he and other private business owners want to go on the offensive. But instead fighting with weapons, they are using something much more dangerous. They are fighting with money.
Belitsakos is a short, slim and alert man who lives in the middle-class Athenian suburb of Holargos. He is also the physical and spiritual leader of a movement of businesspeople in Greece that is recruiting new members with growing speed. While Greece’s government is desperately trying to combat its ballooning budget deficit by raising taxes and imposing new fees, people like Belitsakos are putting their faith in passive resistance.
The group’s slogan is as simple as it is stoic: “We Won’t Pay.”…
Greece, like all socialist countries is, of course, over run by moochers. People who, by one means or another, get all or most of their income via government funding. Whether its by special tax breaks, government employment or direct welfare payments, a huge number of people (and perhaps a majority, once you total it all up) in Europe either don’t work at all, or don’t work much, or don’t work at anything which creates wealth…but they still manage to live pretty well. And, meanwhile, it is people like Mr. Belitsakos who have been paying for it all. And now that Greece’s socialist fantasy has come economically crashing down, the government wants people like Mr. Belitsakos to pony up even more. And a revolt is brewing.
Do keep in mind that those people you remember rioting from time to time in Greece (and Britain and Spain…and soon to spread elsewhere in Europe) were not hard working, middle class people…they were the moochers who are ticked off that even a small amount of their welfare is being cut. Around the world a revolution is brewing…those who are hard working, play by the rules and try to do the right thing are starting to wake up and shake off those who have lived off them for nigh on a century. There won’t be much room for either a George Soros to manipulate governments to make billions, nor for the welfare bum who runs riot when his stipend is cut.
While there is no way for us to shake off our moral responsibility to those who cannot work through no fault of their own, we must all admit that this moral obligation has been much abused. A gigantic amount of money is siphoned away from the productive in the name of helping the less fortunate, but we know where a large amount (possibly a majority) of it goes: to over paid bureaucrats, crony-capitalists and people who could darn well work, but choose not to. The moochers have, by this point, driven us in to bankruptcy…and their only real answer is to demand more from us…and to take it by taxing it, or by devaluing the currency, which steals the wealth we’ve already created.
You know that things are changing when even in socialist Europe, something akin to the TEA Party emerges. This will be quite an interesting decade, I’m thinking.
HAT TIP: Dan Mitchell
Blogs For Victory 
Shades of “Atlas Shrugged”.
Maybe that is what we TEA partyers should do.
We could shut the govt 100% down in a matter of weeks.
Teach the looters and takers who pays for their sloth.
Begging your pardon, but government employees do work. You could certainly argue that some of them do pointless jobs that we pay for through our tax dollars, but there are also plenty of people in the private sector who do pointless jobs, or receive exorbitant pay, which we pay for through increased prices of the goods their coworkers and subordinates produce. You shouldn’t paint all government employees with the same brush, just as you should paint everyone in the private sector with the same brush.
public sector employees are 100% dependent on private sector production. If a private sector employee has a pointless job, that is problem of his employer, and I don;t have to buy the product, so it does not effect me at all. If a public sector employee has a pointless job, I pay for that directly.
Yesterday I asked Casper, a teacher, why I should pay for him. He didn’t answer.
Cluster,
You don’t pay for me.
I, as a tax payer, pay for the building you teach in, pay for the roads you travel on, and pay for your pension, and the taxes you pay, are directly from the salary you receive from tax payers as well, yet statistically, you produce an inferior product. Not exactly a good deal for the tax payers.
Cluster,
You don’t live in my state. You pay nothing in taxes here. As for an inferior product, your proof of that is? Some of my “inferior products” are protecting your sorry butt in the military. Others are doctors, mechanics, teachers, bankers, etc. I don’t consider any of them “inferior”.
You are 100% dependent on the tax payer Casper, for your salary and pension, and quite frankly, looking at the product that our educators are producing as compared to other industrialized nations, I would say the tax payers are being cheated. You’re just more government waste.
Cluster,
First, I would stack my kids up against students from any other school in the world. Second, if you don’t like the product produced by our schools, move to a different country. Somalia doesn’t have much in the way of government or schools. Sounds like your dream.
Resorting again to the childish antics of the left?? Any question as to performance and government accountability is akin to advocating the absence of government? You’re a fool, and a waste of of my tax dollars.
Let’s take the sons a bitches out!!!!
Cluster, cluster cluster,
I can’t be a waste of YOUR tax dollars because you don’t live in my state. You are right in that you aren’t advocating to get rid of all government, just most of it. Perhaps Haiti would be a better choice.
casper does love to quibble. He thinks that he is being quite clever by pointing out that you, personally, do not pay HIS salary unless you pay property taxes in Natrona County, Wyoming. This is what passes for intellectual response from cappy.
casper is a middle school teacher whose job description is that he teaches computer science. So I guess he is probably adequate at teaching adolescents the basics of computer usage. Beyond that, it is hard to imagine him being very good at what he does. His understanding of the founding of this country, the inspirations and goals and ideals of our Founding Fathers, the Constitution they wrote, and its purpose as stated by the founders, is pathetic, and one can only assume that he passes on his ignorant distortions to his students when and if he has classes that touch on these issues.
His grasp of the realities of our political system is also pathetic, as far as we can see from his ditherings—he refuses to state an actual political belief, either because he has none or because when he tried to come up with one he realized how far Left it is.
He seems to spend a lot of time on warm fuzzies in his school—“mentoring” and videoing students pretending to sing popular songs. Again, in these areas he is probably adequate.
Sure, some of his students have gone on to become successful professionals. But after reading his drivel one would be hard pressed to give him any credit for this. Fortunately, his is overall a pretty good school, for which he personally seems to be trying to take a lot of credit. He’s really not all that highly regarded as a bright guy or good teacher.
As usual, it is hard to tell if casper is lying or just dense. For example, Cluster, you never referred to any human being, much less to any of casper’s students, as “inferior”—the product you described as inferior is their education, not them as people.
So we are left looking at casper’s response and having to choose between unable to process the written word or so dishonest he has to try to reframe a comment so he can sneer at it.
And isn’t he just too too darling, not to mention witty, suggesting that if you don’t agree with him you should move to a poor black nation?
And he offers up yet another lie: “You are right in that you aren’t advocating to get rid of all government, just most of it.” Can you quote Cluster saying he wants to get rid of “most of” government?
I didn’t think so. I wonder how many parents of your students know what a liar you are. Or your true politics.
This country would be far better off if we had more people like the Koch Bros. and less people like Casper.
Wow Amazona, you’ve become quite the little stalker haven’t you. Since I’ve quit replying to your posts I guess you felt you had to take it up a notch. I’m a happily married man and I have no interest in you. Please get help.
catspuke
I’m a happily married man and I have no interest in you. Please get help.
The only HELP Ama would need from you is cleaning the barn.
Happily married?
poor woman she may feel different.
Stalker?
camon denny have you shaved the beard yet?
Well, casper, I wasn’t going to get into this, but as your overweening ego has you portrayed as the irresistible victim of an impassioned “stalker” let’s just revisit that whole scenario, shall we?
I live and ranch in Wyoming and I do some business in Casper, Wyoming. At one of these businesses, I was visiting with the receptionist one day and we were talking about politics and the quality of some of the teachers in her children’s schools. I mentioned that a middle school teacher from Casper posted on a blog I also post on, and appears to be a mindless Liberal—mindless in that all he does is parrot radical talking points but has never indicated a real understanding of the system he is promoting.
She asked for an example and I told her of Casper’s insistence that if you are a Constitutional originalist, you believe that we should reinstate slavery, and are against women being allowed to vote. Her response was “I know that guy! He taught my kids! Both of them would come home with these stories of what he had been teaching and we had to set them straight and let them know that Mr. X. was an idiot!” I thought it unlikely that I would be talking to someone who happened to know the person who blogs here, but we traded stories and it became clear to me that we were, in fact, talking about the same person. The teacher she knew had even told his students about his wife buying him an Obama necktie—the clincher, as far as I was concerned.
Not only was there no unrequited love or passion involved in this discovery, there was no effort, either. casper just has the misfortune to be nearly the only rabidly radical kook teaching middle school in this small city in Wyoming, if not the only one.
I told her about his claim that his students “love” him and always want him to sit with them at lunch, and she said he is always sitting with students who feel that they have to be nice to him. He does pay a lot of attention to students with problems, but is not known as being a particularly good teacher as far as actual teaching goes.
I was in the business again several weeks ago, and she asked me if I was still dealing with his stupid posts, and I said yes, he seems to be even further off the rails than last year. She pulled up a video on her computer and showed me a couple of him doing this strange thing where he videos students pretending to be singing pop songs, and we laughed at this. I guess this is “teaching”, casper-style. Sure, kids like “teachers” who let them fool around like this. Every now and then I forward some of his goofiest posts to her, and I get the impression she shares them with some of her friends. She/they will get quite a kick out of these.
casper, you and Velma seem to share a wholly unfounded conviction that someone, ANYONE, finds you irresistible. More like comic relief, I’d say.
And as you never, ever, answered any of my posts with a genuine response to anything I said, if you have quit responding at all I haven’t noticed the difference. Do you really think I am “taking it up a notch” TO GET YOUR ATTENTION???? What a sad, funny, delusional little man you are.
And neo, his name is NOT denny, and I have not seen him with a beard.
“Wow Amazona, you’ve become quite the little stalker haven’t you. Since I’ve quit replying to your posts I guess you felt you had to take it up a notch. I’m a happily married man and I have no interest in you. Please get help.”
You’re not even the only person on this blog she’s stalked; you just happen to be her favorite person on this blog to stalk for some reason.
SA
a typical dumbed downed drone from a loony left college.
No freeking clue about real life.
FYI, I live on a mountaintop in sub-Saharan Africa and have to boil water for my baths and wash my clothes by hand. I personally know the chickens who produce my meals. You, on the other hand, live in a magical kingdom where the vast majority of your needs are met by either an unseen army of distant slaves or a vast arsenal of household robots. I’d say that I come much closer to living in the real world than you do.
Speaking of stalkers—just how does Sergei know about my vast arsenal of household robots if he is not peeking in my windows? Clearly the Alarm Robot is not very effective.
Casper told me.
I don’t know if I am comfortable with Casper using government built roads to drive to his government paid job. It seems to me that his disproportionately benefiting from the government.
in a government motors car no doubt, isnt marxism grand?