A straightforward lie

[fpb]

It is my experience that Thatcherites, neo-liberists et hoc genus omne are pretty free and easy with data. Since they assume that statistics cannot but support their views, their interpretation of events and numbers tends to be, shall we say, loose. But does anything justify this semi-paragraph from the National Review?

While go-go capitalist countries like the United States, Australia, and the UK, and economically dynamic Scandinavian free-traders like Denmark and Sweden rank highest on happiness surveys, the economically sclerotic nations of “Old Europe” — such as Belgium, Austria, Germany, and France — are relegated to second-tier, “less happy” status. Worse still, France lurks at the bottom of the “less happy” nations, doing barely better than the relatively “unhappy” Italians.

"Economically dynamic Scandinavian free traders." Think about it. After a monstrosity of that kind, even to suggest that Italians and French might be "unhappy" for reasons not directly related to the joys of unfettered free enterprise (such as, say, being in the front line of an avalanche of immigration which is poisoning social relations all over the country) is a comparatively minor matter. This is a man who lives in dreamland.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It has NOTHING to do with free enterprise, except for the following points: contrary to the rhetoric of these persons, free enterprise exists in Italy; it is highly successful; and it draws, from Europe, Asia and Africa, an avalanche of immigration that Italy cannot support. In other words, contrary to the lies of these persons, the reason for the unhappiness of Italians as recorded in recent polls is not that they are prevented from exercising their enterprising instincts (HA!!!) but that the prosperity they have built in their country is drawing in an avalanche of immigrants, many of whom undesirable, all of whom unmanageable. The geographical position of Italy makes it more vulnerable to East European and Third World immigration than any other advanced country in the world, and the whole social structure of the country is being brutally regressed, from the cheerful ease that people admired in recent years, to a violent and anarchic third world condition. Which has absolutely nothing to do, in any way, with the blessings of free enterprise that Thatcherism is supposed to encourage (if exporting jobs to the Third World encourages free enterprise).

I would be a lot less harsh towards these people if it wasn't for their intolerable moral superiority complex. For your information, lads, Thatcher was a fraud, and there has never been anywhere any golden age of unfettered free enterprise leading to wonderful public good thanks to the guide of invisible hands that do not exist.

[patchworkmind.livejournal.com]

Oh, so it's quite like the situation in the United States. Okay. I thought I saw your point, and I did, in a way.

I understand your viewpoint.