From Mark Steyn:
If you're wondering where the "stimulus" will lead in the long run, consider this story from The Times of London:
PARTS of the United Kingdom have become so heavily dependent on government spending that the private sector is generating less than a third of the regional economy, a new analysis has found.
The study of “Soviet Britain” has found the government’s share of output and expenditure has now surged to more than 60% in some areas of England and over 70% elsewhere.
Across the UK as a whole, government spending now accounts for 49% of the economy. And look at these regional variations:
Southern England: a mere 36% of the economy is government spending;
Northeast England: 66.4%;
Wales: 71.6%;
Northern Ireland: 77.6%.
As The Times notes:
The state now looms far larger in many parts of Britain than it did in former Soviet satellite states such as Hungary and Slovakia as they emerged from communism in the 1990s, when state spending accounted for about 60% of their economies.
Big government is where once successful nations go to die.
Me: Sad, oh so sad...