Milton Friedman and Greece

Over at the WSJ is an excellent, 10-minute video on what happened in Greece. I don't believe that it's subscriber only, so you can pop over and watch it if you'd like. What you see, unspoken in the video, is a society of people who have detached earning from having.

In all of the interviews, the people speak of the government as if it were some kind of mystical being that provides goods and services conjured out of thin air. They complain about price or availability or wages, but nowhere do they discuss the cost of producing the things they want and who will pay that cost. Reality requires the equations to be balanced, cost equals price paid, but that equation has been locked away in a closet somewhere and ignored. It's like watching people jump off of a chair and then after they land, complain to each other that they fell instead of floated in mid-air. Equations as immutable as those of physics are dismissed as irrelevant or rather, are ignored completely.

That air of unreality is echoed in this little clip of Milton Friedman being interviewed by wannabe Greek*, Phil Donahue.

Phil, like the Euros and the American Left, believes in the moral and productive superiority of the government and was not moved by the abject failure of his philosophy all around him. Socialism failed in 1979 the same as it is failing now in Greece.

* - Well, Greek or European or American progressive or tax-cut fanatic American conservative. Phil wants things, but denies that someone has to make them and that someone has to be paid what that thing is worth.