Poverty Induced by Socialism Is Hard to Shake

Empty meat market     Photo: Octavian Paul Draja

To say that poverty induced by socialist dictatorships is hard to shake would be an understatement. Ask Cubans and now Venezuelans what is like to live in the workers’ paradise that Fidel forced upon his people while he stashed away billions he has stolen with his cronies.

The socialist dictator Hugo Chavez left behind billions in personal bank accounts while Venezuelans struggle to survive under his socialist successor Maduro, who mismanaged the economy just as badly. One of the nations with the richest oil supplies cannot feed its people and provide basic goods that Americans take for granted, bread, milk, butter, diapers, detergent, just to name a few, and must spend hours each day in endless lines to find what they need if they are lucky.

Most people are confused about poverty and each person and economists define it differently. People, who desire socialism and are voting for either Bernie the borderline Marxist or Hillary the Socialist, complain endlessly how unjust and rigged the system is, how the Man keeps them down and there is no equality and social justice. Nobody seems to have any idea about personal responsibility and work ethic.

When compared to most countries in the world, American “poverty” is a bonanza from heaven paid for by government largesse with taxpayers’ money. This government largesse will eventually come to an end when it runs out of other people’s money and it can no longer print trillions once hyperinflation sets in.

According to many Romanians, including hundreds of thousands of poor gypsies who refuse to integrate into normal society and change their lives, Romanians are the citizens impoverished by the communist party and their Securitate successors after the revolution of 1989 when communism ended officially on paper.  Twenty-seven years later, not much has changed for most rural populations.

The online news expunere.com reported that fifty percent of Romanians are very poor and 54 percent of rural inhabitants do not have an occupation.  Most children raised in rural areas have one family member working or the family depends entirely on social welfare.  According to this source, 72 percent of rural families cannot provide their five-year olds a minimum acceptable diet, resulting in malnutrition and disease - 225,000 children go to bed hungry.

To make matters worse, 37 percent of people fifteen years and older are functionally illiterate – they either cannot read or cannot write correctly. In the rural area, 20 percent of children have only an eighth grade education. Citing Eurostat, the overall school dropout rate in 2014 was 18 percent. Unemployment in rural areas among young people, 18-24 years old, was 22 percent. http://www.expunere.com/jumatate-din-populatia-romanieie-este-afectata-de-saracie-in-mediul rural-54-din-localnici-nu-au-ocupatie.html

The standard of living, while vastly improved for people in most large cities, remained the same in the suburbs and rural areas where no significant progress in terms of infrastructure has been made. People live and die trudging through deep ruts in the mud of mostly unpaved roads, carrying water from the village well because nobody has running water or sewer pipes. Outhouses dot the landscape.

In a comment to the poverty news, Silvia Cristescu stated  that “all corrupt individuals who fall under the investigation of the National Directorate of Anti-Corruption (Directia Nationala Anticoruptie or DNA) were members of the former Romanian Communist Party and their heirs. All who defrauded the country, she said, are pro-Russian communists and their children. 

The more than four million Romanian citizens she believes, who left the country for greener pastures of economic opportunity and freedom, understood perfectly who robbed the country blind.  A large percentage of this diaspora voted anti-Ponta, anti-PSD (Social Democrat Party), and anti-socialism. “The enemy of the country is socialism, Marxist atheism of KGB origins,” said Cristescu.

In her view, those who sold the national forests, the land, the factories, and other items in the patrimony of the country, were the same individuals who rejected serious foreign investors under the pretext that they were not “selling the country” but sold everything they could in secret. After all, they knew all the ropes and judges, and, without accountability and fear of the law, pocketed the money, enriching themselves beyond belief.

When honest Romanians tried to replace these former Securitate members who were running for office or incumbents, their votes were stolen by those who were bribed to vote favorably or, not unlike here, mysterious boxes were discovered with hundreds of thousands of votes for the presidential candidate the people did not want.

The Russian KGB influence was so strong in Romania that overturning the disaster of socialism is still a daily battle that takes place today. Socialism will eventually die with the older people who grew up under the mentality of socialist dependency.

However, young people who have no experience, no historical knowledge or recollection of how bad it was under a socialist dictatorship, are lured today into the promise and blind belief that socialism is egalitarian and socially just, the same leitmotif running through the strident and eager-for-their-own-demise collegiate voting crowd, the very ignorant millennials.

Some Romanians take comfort in the fact that Christian America is on their side, that there is now a strategically placed American military base around Constanta, and that socialism will collapse in Romania. Unfortunately, there are many NGOs at work on the ground in Romania that interfere in its politics with loads of cash and grants that are hard to resist, given the stressed economic situation there.

 

 

Low Information Voters in the Information Age

As a former college teacher, I know why idealistic young people vote with their hearts and not based on logic or with their pocketbooks. They have yet to mature into serious tax paying adults.

They lack a solid economic education because they are no longer required to take Economics classes in school and, if they do, are often exposed the entire semester to endless graphs that contribute very little to their understanding of how the economy works ; they are unable to put all the puzzle pieces together, they just build beautiful graphs.

Young voters are easily duped and charmed by charismatic, good-looking politicians who deliver scripted and articulate speeches devoid of truth and logic.

They are naïve and idealistic, holding jobs that pay so little that their meager contributions to society get lost in the economic translation.

They still don’t know how the economy works, where money comes from, how it is created, who sets the interest rates, how international trade is handled, or how the so-called Federal Reserve System’s fractional reserve banking creates/prints money out of thin air to the detriment of their pockets.

Once they graduate, after social promotions from grade to grade by those pushing affirmative action, or by those under pressure to justify standardized test scores tied to budgeting, they are not ready for real life prime time.

They are taught by the Common Core curriculum to feel and not think logically, to be community organizers from first grade, and to be angry in order to obtain “social justice.” They are told it’s fine to be wrong in math as long as they can justify their wrong answers and feel good about it.

They receive undeserved awards for participation even if they walk across a stage without tripping. They are told so many times, they are special, that they begin to believe it and make no effort to achieve anything.

Collectivism is good, individualism and creativity, thinking outside the box, and achieving exceptionalism are bad labels.

The media and the police treat terrorist attacks on people by underage racist psychopaths with no capacity for remorse or ability to discern right from wrong as a game, euphemistically calling it the “Knockout Game.” These are people who are going to vote at some point.

The deliberate dumbing down of education driven by teachers and administrators with a liberal political agenda and by the National Education Association, a union that makes it impossible to fire bad teachers, graduates many Americans who are unprepared and primed for failure.

Public school teachers, mentors placed on unshakable pedestals, come from the ranks of the weakest college students – they would be very hard pressed to pass some of the tests their students are taking; without an answer key, they would be lost.

Relaxing and lowering the standards of education to the lowest denominator for political reasons and self-esteem has been driven by a symbiotic relationship between the College of Education and the Department of Education who formulate the curriculum in education.

Fear of lawsuits and physical attacks from students and parents force many teachers to pass students who would otherwise fail multiple classes. The threat of contract non-renewal or firing by the administration if teachers fail undeserving students is also a real issue.

Many teachers are now forced, including via the onerous Common Core, to emphasize self-esteem over competition, the collective over individual achievement. Virginia Beach elementary schools are getting rid of the Honor Roll and the principal’s list. Why let achievement and hard work harm the self-esteem of lazy students? http://hamptonroads.com/2013/11/virginia-beach-elementary-schools-ditching-honor-roll

Parents no longer teach their kids a solid work ethic, pride in personal achievement, and shame of failure. They protest and threaten law suits if Johnny does not cut the grade, it must be the racist teacher’s fault.

Apathetic parents are no longer involved in their children’s education, abdicating their jobs to government strangers who mold and influence their kids’ future.

Scandal after scandal of overt corruption and lawlessness overwhelm low information voters who depend on comedians to get their news and information. It is too tiresome to process the deliberate manufactured crisis after crisis. They lose track easily because their minds are on cruise control, sharply focused on texting or the latest social media game.

There is no interest in real history because textbooks reconstruct events and historical documents, often replacing them with the latest liberal drivel masked as authoritative scholarship.

The government indoctrination in schools is evident in the many president-worshipping videos on the web and the communist and “social justice” written assignments given in different grades.

Few teach about pride in America’s achievement, history, and generosity, accomplishments that have lifted billions out of poverty and misery, giving Europeans freedom from Nazi oppression and a free economic fresh start.

Three free meals a day in school, free housing, day care, food, health care, Obama phones, and utilities have created a generational welfare dependency and complacency that does not involve patriotism or love for one’s country, just worship of government.

Adults are overwhelmed. There is too much information, too many sources, and inadequate time. People lack the patience or the ability to discern what is reliable and what is unreliable. Too much information does not necessarily lead to thinking that leads to an informed opinion.

Why wouldn’t 50 percent of Americans care about what is happening to their country and to themselves? Lulled by a false sense of security, by welfare derived from negative income taxes and earned income tax credits, the low information class votes for more freebies, more enslavement to a government that only cares about its citizens’ blind voting allegiance.