Socialist UK Drinking Deaths Increase

I have observed that one of the symptoms of the misery of people in socialist countries is their heavy drinking. In a broader historical view, one could observe that mind numbing drug use has a tendency to scale with the misery of the people under despotic regimes. In this way, one includes the use of opium and heroin in many of the countries of Asia with tyrannical governments and the more recent history of the extremely heavy drinking in the Soviet Union and even now in Russia. Eastern Europe also turned more to drink when it was isolated behind the Iron Curtain. When Sweden reached its deepest socialist stagnation, drinking had become very bad there. When Ireland was exploited by the British, Ireland became a land of drunks. Japan is known for its male drunkenness, perhaps induced by the strange tyranny of the Japanese corporate culture and its group decision-making process.

Between 1991 and 2006, alcohol-induced deaths in the United Kingdom more than doubled to 8,758. In that year, alcohol-induced deaths in the United States were 22,073. On a per capita basis, there were about 1.96 times as many deaths in the more socialist United Kingdom. In 1995/1996, 34,660 National Health Service hospital admissions with a primary diagnosis relating to alcohol occurred. In 2005/2006, this number had increased to 52,270, with men producing 70% of these admissions.

Women vote in larger percentages for the security they think that socialism provides. Men are more likely to feel socialism not as security, but as a loss of choice and opportunity. Men are more likely to see themselves as marginalized under socialism and to feel its chains. Men are more likely to become depressed and drown their sorrows in alcohol and drugs. As Great Britain has steadily become more socialist since 1991, the British have turned more and more to drink.

Do we wish to follow the socialist nations of Europe deeper into socialism and hence deeper into depression, especially for men? Are we not also likely to turn more to mind-numbing drugs and drink to suppress our depression if we do so? Shouldn't women think about this consequence for the men of their society before they vote for socialism?

Eviscerating the Private Sector

The private sector is under total attack by government, the mainstream media, and socialists, who are now nearly everywhere in charge of educating our children by virtue of their control of the public schools, of colleges, arts and culture, and increasingly of religion. The attack is unremitting and the inroads toward total control of the economy are terrifyingly extensive. What has happened:

• It has been established in the courts that anything we may wish to sell, whether goods or services, is subject to regulation under the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution, despite its purpose being to free trade.
• The financial industry was heavily regulated, but now the winners are chosen by the federal government using bailout money, with those not being chosen being forced to merge by takeover with those who were chosen.
• The disposal of waste products is largely controlled by governments, with many areas having draconian recycling laws which make no economic sense.
• It has long been law that governments can prosecute a company for charging more for its goods and services than other companies do (proves monopoly), or for charging the same (proves collusion), or for charging less (proves cut-throat dumping). Woe be the company that angers government.
• Homes and commercial buildings cannot be built in most areas of the country without currying the favor of local and often state governments. When they are allowed to be built, they must often be built according to archaic, expensive building codes. Architectural designs must often be approved by conventional thinking local agencies. Often homes can only be built on very large lots, which means that it only makes sense to build large, expensive homes on those lots.
  
• The Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency a very freely exercised power over power plants, manufacturing firms, and the user's of many products such as paints, aerosols, insecticides, and plastic foams.
• The Clean Water Act controls the use of water and the emissions or dumping of chemicals which may pollute water sources. It also means that low spots which are only very occasionally wet, cannot be used, since they are declared wetlands.
  
• Employers are required to hire some people and reject others, sometimes forcing them to adopt racist policies. They are required to serve as unpaid tax collectors and record keepers for governments and their employees. In some cases, they are required to confiscate the pay of their employees.
• People are required to subsidize many businesses through their tax monies. Examples of such businesses are those farmers who grow corn, rice, wheat, soybeans, peanuts, sugar, sugar beets, and many other crops; banks, especially those favored with bailout money; home mortgage holders, especially those in default who will soon be given bailout money; industries protected by tariffs, such as sugar growers, ethanol producers, steelmakers, and many more; power companies using wind-driven electric generators and solar power; companies granted monopolies by government such as cable companies, electric power companies, land-line telephone companies, gas stations on many toll roads, and others; and by companies and individuals given licenses for operation such as cab companies, plumbers, electricians, interior decorators, beauticians, real estate agents, certified public accountants, doctors, psychiatrists, dentists, EPA and FDA and state and local government accredited laboratories; those who purchase energy-efficient cars or who add insulation to their homes; those who send children to college on student loans; those who send children to public education schools; those small businesses who get subsidized loans from the Small Business Administration; those businesses owned by favored minorities and by women; businesses located in depressed zones; and many other activities favored by government.
• Redistribution of income using the progressive income tax, which moves money from those who create wealth and value to those who do not. This is an essential defining characteristic of socialism and has no basis in the American heritage prior to the New Deal in about 1937.
  
• Rare and unimportant species and the occasional hill or mountain take precedence over human needs for land or resources even in situations where the harm to the living species is unknown or minimal while the harm to humans of inaction is very clear and considerable.
• Businesses are required to keep expensive records of all transactions involving money, despite the fact that their only purpose is to be used as evidence against a firm that it is not paying some tax money some government wishes to take from entities with no voting privileges. The more government can tax business the happier it is, since voters care little and understand little about how these taxes have deleterious impact upon their lives. Businesses are required by Sarbanes-Oxley accounting requirements to use accounting procedures which make little economic sense.
  

What do we have to look forward to? Much more of the same. This includes:

• The declaration that the use of most energy forms produces polluting and climate-changing CO2, so our use of all the major forms of energy will be curtailed. This means much less economic activity since coal, oil, and natural gas use will be greatly reduced, despite the fact that this will do very little to reduce climate change, which is dominated by the forces of nature, not by those of man.
• Much more massive redistribution of income, with non-taxpayers receiving deceptively termed tax rebates from hard-working and creative thinkers who earn higher incomes.
• Slower economic growth caused by reduced use of energy, more expensive energy, less efficient investment of income due to government favored redirections, less total investment since lower income people invest less, an unwillingness to invest in longer term projects because of erratic and arbitrary government interferences such as changes of tax law and emission standards, the holding of investments for excessive periods to avoid paying higher capital gains taxes, shifting investment into government bonds, the increased commitment to expanding operations abroad where corporate taxes are lower, and creative and hardworking people working less.
• A great increase in required service to the government or to those charitable activities it may favor. Women will be required to register for the draft. More schools will require community slavery, err... service, before children are allowed to graduate from high school. College loans will be dependent upon signing up for service with the government, which will put many ignorant and untrained young people into the business of using government power, resources, and our tax money to do all sorts of mischief.
• Heavier dependence upon Social Security for retirement as stocks and securities either continue to shrink in value or grow much more slowly. As the economy grows more slowly, the tax income to support those on Social Security will diminish. Obama would give tax rebates to people who do not pay income tax, claiming that the rebate is really because they pay Social Security taxes. The distinction between income tax and Social Security tax will be completely lost. Since the Social Security money already collected has already been spent largely on non-Social Security programs by the federal government, that distinction was already very weak. In order to continue the Social Security program for Baby Boomers and beyond, the tax burden on the remaining workers will increase until they rebel, assuming that their vote is any longer able to take power away from the governments. Obama may choose to rule as his socialist hero Hugo Chavez does in Venezuela where the voters have little say.
• Freedom of speech will be everywhere as limited as it is now on most college campuses and in most public schools. Important issues will no longer be discussed, because if an issue is important, it has the power to make someone upset and it is not allowable to upset anyone, unless he is intelligent, hardworking, and a creative and rational thinker. The remaining pablum which we will be allowed to talk about will be the subject of radio talk show hosts chosen initially to have equal numbers of conservatives and socialists and very few libertarians under a Fairness Doctrine. After awhile, all libertarians and most conservatives will be banned, since it will be claimed that they are guilty of hate-speech and racism or that they are global-warming deniers.
• Human beings will be discouraged from procreating, since they are considered a threat to the planet and natural ecosystems. They cut down forests, build homes, use resources, and breathe out the greenhouse gas CO2. Humans will be considered inherently evil by most people rather than just the elitist environmental radicals of today and those young people recently rolled out of the propaganda mills called schools. Western Europe and Russia, where new births are far below replacement levels, will set the example in the U.S. where our population is damned for growing.
  
• Massive depression of the population will set in as they realize that they cannot do anything unless they get the approval of 25 government agencies, all of whom are fighting for power and have different, often contradictory, requirements. Many more people will turn to alcohol and drugs, as they do in Russia, to forget their helplessness and their total insignificance. Some, those who can remember the time, will dream of living a self-directed life.
• The United States of America will be as jaded as France and Germany. People will lose all sense of individuality. They will be defined only by what gender, race, and economic class they fall into. Employers will have the duty to provide jobs and will be thoroughly hated. More and more, government will attempt to chain them to their posts. Slavery will make a historical return with minorities and women as slave masters of so-called white males. Of course, this slavery will be directed through the agency of government, so that it will be easier for people to pretend that it is just required service. The slave masters will be many, rather than a single individual.
  

If we should fly with McCain, he will push us out of the plane with a deployed, but badly ripped parachute. If we fly with Obama, he will push us out of the plane in a free-fall without a parachute. We sure do have a lot to look forward to as we watch the ground come rapidly closer, before socialism gains its last death grip on us as we imprint the earth. Our deaths as individuals will be unlamented, but we will be damned for that last imprint we make upon the earth.

Leon Aron - Back in the USSR?

Leon Aron is the director of Russian studies and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. On Monday, 14 July, he published a column in the Washington Post providing an interesting update on Russia. He draws a parallel with the USSR under Brezhnev, when the USSR was benefiting from high oil prices in the 1970s. Under Brezhnev, many of the excesses that later helped lead to the fall of the Soviet Union became SOP. Under Putin and his minions, Russia has become increasingly authoritarian, corrupt, and has burdened the economy with ever greater statism.

In the 1970s the Soviets consumed 8 liters of strong alcoholic beverages each, which was more than the people of any other country. As a result, male life expectancy fell from 67 to 62 years between 1964 and 1980. Now, per capita consumption of vodka is 10 liters according to Russian officials, but experts say it is definitely higher than that. In the U.S. consumption of strong alcoholic beverages is 2.57 liters per capita. Life expectancy for Russian men now is 60.6 years or 15 years shorter than in the U.S. and the European Union.

70% of the food in Russian cities is imported. The denationalization of land in the 1990s lead to food surpluses, which the USSR had not had, but the failure to put land property rights on a sound basis has again led to food shortages. Local officials use their continued power over land rights to force entrepreneurs and farmers to share their output and income with them.

Russia is ruled by the United Russia party, which rigs elections. There is no effective opposition to demand that disastrous policies be changed. Putin has achieved stability in the nomenklatura. His followers are given positions free of criticism and without consequences for their failures.

Russia, with China, has been helping the Iranians with their nuclear program. Russia is once again flying planes along the edges of our airspace in practice attack sessions. As the country has come under increasingly dictatorial rule, it has followed the usually increasingly aggressive nature of such regimes. But, the present rulers are also repeating the mistakes of Brezhnev and company and are setting Russia up for another fall when oil prices drop and can no longer support such a rotten structure.