Pericles a capitalist state is only sustainable when it is also a welfare state. For one to become wealthy one has to extract those resources from a multiple of other actors. Money doesnt grow on trees , first you have to get a lot of people to cut them down , grind them up , turn it to paper, print the money , keep accounts have it stored. Those people get a small percentage from you. When they degrade ones fiscal baseline degrades and then comes recession and one faces bankrupcy. The cycle is quick in the developing world where lower and also undervalued skills, lower product quality and health undercut capital survival. Many Parts of inland United States have been in perpetual recession since the Reagan years because 12 months unemployment translate to life unemployment or working poor. Charity or low wages cannot support a declining circle and so the only choice for many is homelessness, crime or existing in trailer parks.

Just a link: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2048

Cute link, strayan.

Unfortunately, like everything based on a Mark Steyn piece, it doesn't stand up in a light wind.

(I love the guy, by the way, and read everything of his I can get my hands on - he's a brilliant writer and a highly intelligent commentator)

Here's just one example of where the "facts" are stretched:

>>The fact is there just isn’t enough work to go around. For every Susan Moore who sponges off the system apparently contentedly, there are at least two other people desperately struggling to find meaningful work.<<

Since that was written in 2004 there have been some half a million legal immigrants into the UK from the enlarged EU, plus a few more that they don't know about.

But the unemployment rate has decreased over the same period.

Please explain?

West, I hear your words, but struggle with their meaning.

>>Pericles a capitalist state is only sustainable when it is also a welfare state... Charity or low wages cannot support a declining circle and so the only choice for many is homelessness, crime or existing in trailer parks.<<

Isn't that what is happening right now?

Doesn't that mean that the system has failed, not that it makes the "capitalist state sustainable".

In fact, I'd say it was proof that it was broken.

When welfare is inbuilt, it will constantly overspend, and it will inevitably direct resources to where they are not needed as well as to where they are.

Add the ever-multiplying administrative overhead (ever heard of a public servant voluntarily decreasing staff levels through increasing efficiency?) and you have a recipe for appalling resource usage.

That is what is happening now, and until it changes there will - as you point out - be less and less to go round.

The obviously right wing author has not heard today's news, 20,000 children still live on the street, in the wealthiest nation on Earth.

His attempts at justifying the need for social welfare, that should be cut, is merely another move by the wealthy to screw the ordinary working man and his family into the dirt. We have very little now, could Australia justify its poor dying of starvation, while retaining a budget of $800billion to provide for 20 million people, I think not.

Congrats, Shonga, you win the prize for just plain commonsense.
It is a fact that in this world we simply need a distribution or a balance of wealth, which economic philosophers like Maynard Keynes warned so much about when he spoke of extreme right-wing capitalism.

He would never have believed that the young ones are now taught to admire the multi-billionares and to look down on whom they term the no-hopers - like ready to kick a sheep that can't keep up with the flock.

Also please remember you admirers of the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers that they were not true Christians, but forsakers of the Sermon on the Mount to become followers of the doctrine of the Ancient Promised Land in their occupation of America, with similar merciliness enough in their minds to have pathways run with blood.

Unfortunately, it can be noted in the gaze of many of George Dubya's henchmen, matching that of any a well-drilled Nazi stormtrooper