A painfully accurate description of socialism and the EU?

Just weeks after Britain narrowly avoided the disaster of electing Ed ‘Edstone’ MiniBrand’s bunch of socialist no-hopers, it might be useful to briefly look at what motivates the third of the electorate that voted for another financially-incontinent, economically-illiterate Labour government.

The basic philosophy of socialism is a strong sense of entitlement to other people’s efforts and wealth.

Socialists always have a strong social agenda (equality, fairness, helping the less well-off etc) but rarely a credible economic one (how to pay for it).

The socialist belief goes something like this: “I need a certain amount of income for myself and my family to live a decent life, therefore I am entitled to have it.

If I’m unable to earn this much myself, then somebody else must make up the difference between what I get and what I want:

1.  My employer must pay me more for my efforts however exemplary or feeble those efforts are. Moreover, even if my efforts are well below those of my co-workers, I still deserve as much money as them.  But if my employer chooses to exploit me by paying me what I am worth rather than paying me what I want (and what I feel I am entitled to) then……..

2.…. my next-door neighbour (who is smarter and/or more hard-working than me and therefore earns more than me) must give me some of their income through paying higher taxes some of which should be given to me either as handouts or free public services

3.…If that is not enough to satisfy my sense of entitlement and my need to buy all kinds of consumer rubbish and holidays for myself and my family, then the Government must borrow more money, give some to me and get somebody else’s children and grandchildren to pay back the debt at some time in the future

4. Usually most socialists and Labour voters expect a combination of 1, 2 and 3

Socialism is often merely self-interest justified by ideology and in a normal socialist economy the sense of entitlement to other people’s wealth is legitimised by democracy.  i.e. to claim that most people in the country voted for redistribution of wealth so it is legitimate to implement it.

In the worse days of the trade union excesses of the 1970s, workers would decisively vote themselves a 40% wage increase and then were scandalised when their “democratic will” was not fulfilled by “management” or the prevailing government. They failed to understand that voting for something didn’t automatically mean it was practical or affordable.

All the Greeks have done in electing Syriza is to vote for an end to austerity. As did the French in 2012. Mr. Tsipras is using democracy as justification for his current stand.  But he has forgotten that whilst Greece has democratically voted itself the right to more free money, Germany, as a separate country, is equally democratically entitled to vote to refuse to give it.

The concept of earning the money you want to spend does not compute in the socialist psyche.  So we have reached the inevitable fatal flaw with socialism, pointed out so eloquently by Margaret Thatcher:

The EU is largely built on socialist principles – central control by bureaucrats who know best and fleecing taxpayers in a few ‘rich’ countries – Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and of course Britain – to pay for the idleness, low productivity and sense of entitlement of the majority of countries – Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, Czech Republic etc etc.

If Britain were to leave the EU taking its £19bn a year contribution with it, the whole house of cards would collapse. That’s why Euro-Dave is working so hard to keep us in the EU so we can carry on subsidising the sense of entitlement of the majority of EU countries who have no desire to earn the money they wish to spend because they can just vote to get it from us.

If we ever were to get a fair EU referendum (very unlikely), then we could vote to stop giving our money to the European millions who feel entitled to it.