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Leftists continue to offer a political agenda that is based on subsidies, big government spending and lies. When they come to power they start the giveaways until they drive their countries into bankruptcy. In this installment of Culture War Emmanuel Rincon, editor-at-large at El American, analyzes how the cancer of high government spending and electoral promises hurts countries.
“Socialist governments use the issuance of debt or money printing as a petty cash, which without any kind of control hides or covers fiscal deficits and the country’s structural flaws with high government spending without the aim of establishing self-sustainable projects,” says Emmanuel.
In that sense, he explains that in the populist discourse to talk about helping the poor and feeding them is very good. It is also good to offer free health care, free education and everything that means free or that has to do with subsidies. However, he stresses, that has a cost in the economy.
“For this to happen there must be money, production and a production that is real, not a fake one issued by a Central Bank. This is why social aid does not end up being such a thing, but is worse because it ends up impoverishing even more.”
For this reason, he commented that the disproportionate growth of the State, with the intention of accumulating all the resources, is one of the greatest dangers for the financial and democratic stability of a country. He argued that the State’s money tends to be easily wasted because those who manage it were not the ones who generated it and because “it is easy to be generous with resources that are not yours”.
“Government spending should always be viewed with suspicion. Especially because, as a general rule, the citizen is unaware of the background of the nation’s finances. By this I mean where the funds come from and where they go to,” says Emmanuel.
Government spending in socialist administrations in Latin America
In this sense, he referred to the policies of socialist governments in Latin America, which have led their countries to bankruptcy and hyperinflation. Specifically, he commented on the promise of Hugo Chávez, in Venezuela, to have the best electric system in the region and expropriated the main electricity companies. Today, the reality is that Venezuela is facing a crisis in its electricity system.
For Culture War’s host, this is because it is not possible to live only on promises and expropriations, but a plan to achieve quality public services must be considered. “Socialist fallacies and promises are given by the millions. Venezuela’s electric case is just an example of how populist speeches operate, based on lies.”
On the other hand, he indicated that “the State works just like a company, which has income and expenses. And if it has higher expenses, it is destined to go bankrupt. You don’t have to be very intelligent to understand something so simple.”
Finally, he assured that it is necessary for citizens to be informed about the government plans of politicians. He stated that it is necessary to have people who ask and question the projects because it is the voters who set limits to the politicians.
He emphasized that “It is extremely easy to promise and lie. If citizens continue buying the same fallacies and voting for the demagogue and populist of the moment, and not for whoever offers a serious and coherent government program, based on transparent budgets, politicians will continue lying to achieve their objectives.”
