Socialism vs. Capitalism

27 November, 13

A few years ago, Susan and I were visiting Spain. We were hanging out with Julio and Toñi and having a discussion about the merits of Socialism. Our discussion was taking place on the balcony of their beach house. Julio owns his own business. Toñi is an O.R. nurse in one of the best hospitals in Spain. They were at the beach for the month of August. Their kids have braces, which cost about a third of what they would cost in the USA. They have a nice house in La Alberca. The schools are great. I had to admit that this brand of Socialism wasn't too bad. What is not to like?

That was 2010. Now I live here, and I have studied more subjects than this one family. Not many people have the same lifestyle. Heck, most people in America don't have that kind of lifestyle. So what about the Average Jose? What is his life like?

In general life is pretty darn good here. Public services are efficient. The trash gets picked up. The lights stay on. The sidewalk gets swept everyday. The education and healthcare systems are excellent. They actually run pretty lean, from an administrative standpoint; much leaner than what I have seen in the USA. You can get a wonderful education all the way through a Master's degree at little or no cost. Many people here have taken advantage of that.

So what is missing? Our English class has peeled back the curtain a little bit for us. We have 15 students now, and about five of them are unemployed. They are all young and well-educated. Most of them have Master's degrees. Why can't they find work?

That is the big deal-breaker for me on Socialism versus Capitalism.

In pure Ayn Rand style Capitalism, nobody looks for a job. Everyone makes his own job. Ice Cold Capitalism allows people to starve on the streets, because hunger is a great motivator. When I have traveled to third world countries, such as Nicaragua and Peru, I have seen people living in landfills. They are some of the most creative entrepreneurs I have ever encountered, transforming trash heaps into marketable goods. Theirs is a barely existing lifestyle, but they are living, and doing so in a broken economy with little to no government.

Here in Spain, it is very difficult to open a business. They require reams of paperwork, and you must have a physical location and proper insurance. That sounds nice. They are trying to limit the risk of failure, but risk/reward is what makes businesses thrive.

Right now in America and all over the world, homegrown biotech labs are popping up everywhere. People are doing genetic experiments right in their very own living rooms. We will either all become zombies after the outbreak, or somebody is gonna cure cancer and ton it. Basement Economics drive innovation. Think Apple and Microsoft.

Risk is the fuel for the business engine, and Socialism, at its core, is risk-averse. Socialism seeks to protect every citizen, to provide a safety net, or better yet a safety belt, to keep you from falling in the first place. Let's just keep the high-wire two feet off the ground. Capitalism is like a bunch of teenage redneck boys, hollering out, "Hey! Y'all watch this!" In Capitalism, the role of government is not to protect every citizen, but to allow citizens to create their own economic protections or die trying.

So if you are a business owner here in Spain, you have a pretty good situation, because the government has erected artificially high barriers to entry for your competition. If you are a young, well-educated person looking for work, you are on the outside, looking in. The fact that so many young people have their degrees has created a classic Supply and Demand Economics equation. Demand for employees is low. Supply is high at 25% unemployment. Therefore the value of that education MUST drop. "Oh you have a MBA? So sorry, Maria has a PhD."

Another layer of complexity is the relative security government employees enjoy. They are the un-fireable. That is probably the case in any country. You never see a bunch of bureaucrats walking the bread line.  So you have a bunch of well-educated people with no jobs, desperately looking for work and government workers with no incentive to work, desperately looking for another vacation.

Now the economic driver in the European Union is the search for which country has the most free services, nicest climate and best lifestyle. It's not innovation, but preservation. Many Britons have moved to Spain, because Spain's healthcare is so good. Since they are part of the EU, they automatically have coverage. This created unintentional pressure on the healthcare system here, so Spain has changed its laws to make it tougher to get coverage. Our family is not privy to that free healthcare, and we have to pay for health insurance. We get better coverage and pay less than in the USA, so it's not all bad.

We cannot, however, start a business or get a job. In other words, we can spend money here, but we can't generate it. That's why America has more millionaires than anywhere else in the world. If you can make it to our shores, the sky's the limit.

Now if we could just import more of the food and wine from Spain...

Holiday Traditions

23 November, 13

Living in a foreign country can be pretty liberating sometimes. It is an opportunity to be "other than". You can try different foods, act a different way, explore different hobbies. It's kind of like building a real world avatar of yourself. The trouble is the avatar IS you, so old original self bumps into new different self at weird intersections. Holidays are one of those crossroads.

My first experience here with American holidays was Columbus Day. Now we all know how important that holiday is for us, right? I don't know of any particular tradition around it, other than everybody saying, "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." We all congratulate ourselves on knowing an incredibly important date in American history, and making it rhyme, then we go back to work, because it's usually not even a day off. Unless you work for the government.

In Spain, this is a huge holiday, but not for Columbus. He, and America, is an afterthought. "Oh yeah, we discovered the Americas and totally dominated there for a couple hundred years. (yawn)" They celebrate the unification of Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, the same set of royals that commissioned Columbus and that also drove out the Moors from Spain.

Halloween was an interesting experience as well. We decided to have a big party at our house and told everybody they had to have a costume to get in. Surprisingly most of the people complied, youth and adults. One parent told me that his child didn't have a Halloween costume, but he did have a Spiderman outfit, and he hoped that would be alright. They think you have to be scary to count as a Halloween costume. We gave candy to all the kids. At the end of the night, they were in a sugar-induced coma. Candy is not a part of their normal diet, not even for birthdays and holidays.

At school, they have a "Week of Terror" and decorate the hallways with spiderwebs, coffins, etc. Then they would have random people go screaming through the hallways and busting in classrooms, wearing scary masks. If that happened in the USA, somebody would be shot, and the whole school would be on lockdown for the rest of the day. News helicopters would circle overhead and the S.W.A.T. team would hustle into position. The funny thing is that, to the Spaniards, Halloween is an American holiday. They are getting their ideas from us. This is what they think we do for Halloween.

Susan and I decided to host some Thanksgiving meals, as a way of demonstrating our thanks to a few families that have helped us out in Spain so much. I have sampled every ort of food my friends have put in front of me. You know it's gonna be good, when they tell you to try something, but won't tell you what it is. Then they snicker conspiratorially, like a bunch of middle schoolers trying to get the new kid to run through Old Man Wilson's backyard, knowing he has a huge angry pit bull just waiting for a kid-sized snack.

Thanksgiving is our opportunity to introduce our friends to some American cuisine. Susan busted her tail cooking up a "for real, no holds barred" Thanksgiving feast. I ordered the turkey from Pepi.

Now keep in mind that our stove is just slightly bigger than an EZ Bake oven. Susan did a fantastic job on the whole meal. We had:

1. Turkey
2. Mashed potatoes
3. Gravy
4. Green Beans
5. Stuffing
6. Sweet potato casserole
7. Homemade apple sauce
8. Cranberry/pomegranate compote
9. Apple pie
10. Ice cream

The only thing that was store-bought was the ice cream on top of the apple pie. Everything else was from scratch. Susan rocked it. While she was cooking, I thought it best to get out of her way, so I played an intense game of padel. My only big job for the day was to get up close and intimate with the turkey, rubbing it down with olive oil and spices. We smoked a cigarette and watched Johnny Carson afterwards.

If you take a hard look at the menu, you will notice about 10 pounds of sugar. Items 1-5 are savory. The rest of the meal is sweet. And this is normal for us. "Us" being Americans. 

Our first family was Soledad and her three kids. We had an impressive display of food on the table, and Soledad wanted us to describe each dish. She had that look on her face that said, "I don't know what the hell I am about to eat, but I will keep this grin on my face the whole time, if it hairlips the President." It was funny to watch her reaction, as we described each item and 50% was sweet. She had a confused look, questioning in her mind why we had so many desserts and so little food. I think Soledad genuinely liked the meal. Her kids didn't go for much of the food, but they do love gravy. 

We have introduced Spain to a new way of life. Carbo loading a dessert for the main course. I guess our work here is done.