"Europeans face a Choice: Growth or Safety Net" That was the headline this week in a column in the Wall Street Journal.  It caught my attention because this has always been the choice faced by Europe, which has consistently chosen the Safety Net and its stifling taxes and regulation with the small exception of England under Margaret Thatcher, now a distant memory.  Europeans have always chosen the "guarantee" of lots of government benefits and free healthcare over growth and opportunity.  It is why, as one small example, there are lots of European entrepreneurs and doctors living in the US, where they have traditionally migrated to take advantage of opportunity.  And now we are heading down the same road.

The problem is that this was never a real choice at all.  In fact, when you tax and regulate you slowly and surely suck the life out of the economy until, one day, there is no one left to tax a regulate enough to pay for the whole mess.  Then you are left with borrowing from others and when that hits its limit, you are left with printing up paper funny money.  It simply cannot go on no matter what complicated accounting and fiscal schemes politicians and economists dream up.

And here we are, taxes going up, regulation going up, printing of money going up, and the dollar inexplicably going up against the Euro because sick as it is, they are worse than we are and supposedly that should give us succor.  Yeah, right.

Don't be fooled by short term blips up in the stock market or real estate.  This is a disaster that is getting worse and worse by the minute. All we have done as a nation so far is make it worse as we enact into law new financial regulations and a healthcare plan that is without a shred of doubt the worst bill ever passed by Congress.  Folks, all of this costs money that doesn't exist and the Day of Reckoning is fast coming upon us.