Democracy, Healthcare, Banking, Tax and Spend

DEMOCRACY
Democracy fails badly in the western world for the last thirty years or so because democracy encourages liars (politicians) and irresponsible voters as well as entrenched interests like civil service and business interests that resist change and reinforce bad practices.

Greece is a good example having expanded civil service badly prior to joining the eu and the decade after that change is now difficult to achieve.

Governments simply cannot promise good life without putting in hard work for all. Many in the western world will only find this out the hard way as no one wants to sacrifice until the system breaks down.

HEALTHCARE
Healthcare is the most abused system in many economies esp those with universal coverage like UK AUST CANADA. You would like to think that having contributed so much in payroll taxes, healthcare coming as free or at a small price is a given. But queues are building up at every channel - lab tests, specialist care, surgery etc, WHY? Because your legislators councillors, civil servants are the priority clients at the front, so normal citizens are pushed further to the back of the queue.

BANKING
The LIBOR incident tells you that banks and central bank are not trustworthy.

We are already into the 4th year since the crisis begins and still no end in sight, therefore we might see further downside for the stock market and economy.

Interbank markets are no longer working as stated earlier in this blog, so credit extension to bank customers are drying up too, the economy is doomed. The result is that many banks in Europe might not be around when the trough is finally here some time in the future.

TAX and SPEND
Countries like Japan UK USA still want to raise taxes to balance their budgets, what they should do are
- cut back spending
- cut civil service
- cut summit meetings
We cannot find evidence in modern economy that raising taxes can boost growth, it will only get spending more entrenched. History indicates otherwise, Great Britain is a good example as they raised personal taxes above 50% back in the 70s and their economy is going nowhere. Sweden also experienced overspending because of high taxes and ended up almost bankrupt two decades ago.