Hamsters on a wheel …

The reason socialist utopian systems – such as proposed by Bernie Sanders and now the Pope – ultimately fail isn’t solely because they run out of other people’s money. 

Socialist systems fail because of a profoundly flawed premise.

That premise is that everyone wants to work. Like hamsters running furiously on wheels, people work – not just to make money to buy things – but because work itself fulfills some inner need. 

So socialists presume earning money is not the most important motivation for working, and working harder to earn even more money isn’t either. 

If they give people everything – like free healthcare, free food, affordable housing, and a generous cradle-to-grave safety net – they believe everybody physically able to work will still work hard as long as they can. Like hamsters on a wheel. And those compelled by their nature to work and earn more won’t mind paying much higher taxes to provide those same benefits to all.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, as the saying goes.  

Of course, humans don’t actually function that way. The will to survive may be genetically hard-wired, but a work ethic isn’t. A work ethic is an acquired trait; it’s not part of our DNA.  

If people can make as much money and have as many things by working less – or not at all – than they do from working hard, a pretty large segment will opt not to work at all. Many will use the safety net as a comfortable hammock as long as they can; forever if possible.

That’s also human nature. 

If you want proof of that, think of all the young adults out of school now yet still living at home mooching off their parents. They have no motivation to get a job as long as they can live rent-free, stay on their parents’ insurance, and have someone else feed them and do their laundry. There are also those who have decent-paying jobs but still live with their parents “to save money for a house” or some other fantasy reason. They aren’t leaving any time soon.

I know because I’ve employed young people in their mid-20s making a good salary but still sponging off mom and dad.  It frees up their paycheck for vacations, nights out on the town, and expensive car payments – in short, luxuries their parents couldn’t afford at their age. 

Not surprisingly, these domestic parasites are big supporters of Obama, Bernie and Hillary.    

So no one should be surprised when so many people here and abroad take advantage of government assistance programs instead of finding a full-time job, or working harder to earn more. If all their basic needs are met, what’s the point of getting up every day, trudging to work, spending hours doing something they don’t really enjoy, when they don’t really have to? 

I think if most of us were completely honesty about it, we wouldn’t work either if we didn’t have to, as long as we could maintain our current lifestyle. We might pursue our hobbies more, maybe travel more, and maybe spend more time with friends and family. 

Oh sure, there are some of us that like to say how much we “love” our jobs, but as we age we “love” our regular jobs a bit less each year. If someone were to give us a big fat check with no strings most of us would be out the door like our hair’s on fire.  

And that’s us, the boomers, who have been accustomed to working for money since we first babysat, mowed a neighbor’s lawn or shoveled their driveway, played in a band, or delivered papers. We grew up wanting money to buy things and saw work as the only sure way to get our own money.   

Imagine that you’re someone who has never had to work for money, because there was no point; you could just as easily survive and have most of your basic needs met by government handouts. If you earned money, taxes would take most of whatever you earned anyway. So why bother? 

If you wanted a bit more, but didn’t want to lose a chunk of it to taxes, you could just work off the books and not report your income. Voilà.          

When enough people start acting that way, fewer people are in the actual workforce and paying taxes.  With fewer people paying taxes, and ever-rising costs to keep funding an ever more inclusive safety net, politicians who want to stay in power only have a couple of choices:  borrow more money or raise taxes, or, in the worst case, do both.      

That’s been Obama’s plan, and the plan of liberal Democrats.  

What got me thinking about this were recent statements by Bernie Sanders who wants the U.S. to provide free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage, and free single-payer healthcare as a basic human “right.”  Bernie’s drawing huge crowds which indicates there are a lot of folks out there who think the freedom envisioned by our founders should really mean free - dom. 

Then there’s Greece.  And, much closer to home, Puerto Rico. 

Both are bankrupt for the same reasons. They spend too much and collect too little. Instead of addressing that imbalance, successive sets of politicians have papered over growing deficits by borrowing billions. Now they can’t pay those billions back. They can’t even pay the interest. 

Not enough people are working in either Greece or Puerto Rico. The Greek unemployment rate is about 25%; Puerto Rico’s is about 12.6%.  It’s important to remember that the rate only accounts for those actively seeking employment; it doesn’t tally how many simply aren’t working because they don’t want to or don’t have to because they are receiving benefits. 

In Puerto Rico the problem's even more interesting than that, however. Those who are working there are only about as a third as productive as their mainland U.S. counterparts. But since employers have to adhere to U.S. minimum wage standards, even Paul Krugman – the avidly liberal economist who writes for the New York Times – now thinks there should be a much lower minimum wage for Puerto Rico, especially given the low productivity per worker.

So it seems, a higher minimum wage isn’t always the answer to boosting the economy or redistributing income. Unless it’s here in the States, of course. And unless you’re talking about Walmart, McDonalds, or other entry-level employers here. Go figure. 

Also hampering Puerto Rico are a lot of laws that make it difficult for companies to fire or lay off employees.  In every U.S. state except Montana employees are “at will” employees, which means if they aren’t part of a union or covered by a contract, they can be fired “at will” for any reason. Not so in Puerto Rico.  The same goes for severance packages – stateside non-union employers aren’t always obligated to provide severance packages to employees they terminate. But they are in Puerto Rico and the length and amount of mandated severance payments can be substantial. 

Now I’m sure these are all popular with Puerto Rican workers. But these are also job killers. Why would anyone build or run a company there with employees that are a third less productive than those stateside, but paid the same, and who cannot be easily fired?

Socialists will say that’s why capitalism is evil and based on exploiting the hard work of others just to get what the Pope recently called “the dung of the devil.”  

Krugman’s call for a lower minimum wage in Puerto Rico inadvertently proves one of my points about socialism.  A large part of the world’s population will only work as much as necessary. Given enough free stuff to satisfy most of their needs a lot of folks simply won’t work at all; in fact, they’ll start to demand more and better free stuff. 

And they’ll fight like Hell against anyone who tries to take any of their free stuff away

Mark Twain once said that if you feed a dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog an a man. He was right, unfortunately, too often.  

That’s why pie-in-the sky, cradle-to-grave safety nets proposed by socialists inevitably fail. They run out of money because they run out of people working and paying taxes. After a while, the generosity of the system makes it more attractive to too many to simply stop working.    

The takers eventually outnumber the payers. The system collapses.    

Human nature being what it is, there will never be enough hamsters on the wheel.