A person linked an article about the recovery of the Icelandic economy which is one of those things that irritates me. Not the person, of course..I think the person who linked it is awesome, actually. It's the twin abilities of people to apply square pegs to round holes because, hey, that thing went through A HOLE, so it must work in all holes (actually that explains a lot about my countries approach to sexuality too, such as why straight people think gay people will invariably lust after them). The other ability is to debate massive and interconnected topics with lone declarative comments less than or equal to 140 characters. I'm all about Twitter, folks..just some things take longer to discuss even if we use l33t speak. Here's what I said:
Well, it's an interesting case, but it's a tiny country, geographically isolated, has one of the world's smallest economies, (12bn at the time of crisis..smaller than the US spends on porn) and it's all exports (40% of which is fish!)...even WITH those factors, it was 2 1/2 years of suck when they pressed the reset button..and of course while it's not a so-called welfare state, there are no private hospitals, no health insurance, and 85% of all health care costs are subsidized by taxes, and the lion's share of government spending is spent keeping their health care system going, combined with the lack of currency Independence (no country or large firm locks up large % of their investments in the Icelandic króna!)...and were the US to try to adopt a similar process, we'd be kept at a far worse level of living for a FAR longer time, and with a lack of the social safety nets, many people would suffer or even die. You can be a social Darwinist about this, or a hard-right Conservative about it if you like (the recent GOP debate where the crowd said a poor person would die, for example) but the issue isn't ONLY one of compassion or conscience, but operational security. In short, when things get bad, high unemployment (much higher than current rates), displacement, social disenfranchisement, and pressurized by emotional triggers such as death, starvation, cold weather, etc., you'll see crime and unrest rise, feeding further crime and unrest. Soon, you're just someplace difficult to get back from.
So what then? Well, if they decide in Brussels next week to take steps towards combining 17 euro economies, and/or the proposed super bond to spread risk between the strong and weak economies (obviously a bitter pill, but it's better than cutting off your nose to spite your face...Germany, the strongest economy would see the mark shoot up in value were the euro to fail, but their export reliant economy would crumble since other countries currencies would buy diddly against the now-super Deutschmark..no matter how much you might hate your irresponsible neighbors, you need them to buy your crap). Either measure (I favor the first) would provide the security to both the Euro zone and US wall street firms to bolster our own economy enough to ALLOW us to tackle the actual problem (no, this "crisis" isn't REALLY the problem) of our failed legislative branch, followed by the fantastically corrupt financial industry, allowing us to make the social reforms we all desire, but I'm sure we'll argue about anyway.
