A Look at Christmas Future

In Charles Dicken's story "A Christmas Carol", Ebenezer Scrooge was shown what his future life might look like if he did not change his ways. Scrooge was so shook up by this horror that he did indeed repent and take a new direction for his life.

Can America do the same? The tragedy playing out in Greece ought to be a wake up call for this country. We cannot continue to overspend our means and expect to maintain our current level of living. Greece faces the challange of "a cleanup task of mammoth proportions: getting rid of a toxic mountain of government debt that threatens the financial health of much of Europe."

As one government union worker declared, "Greece wants to cut the pay of hundreds of thousands of civil servants on its overstuffed payroll as part of a tough new public-spending regimen. But Maggelis and his fellow workers are fighting back with a massive walkout planned for Wednesday and the promise of more strikes to come."

"It can't be that [BLOATED GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACIES ARE CUT] for the mistakes of past governments," Maggelis said. "The only result of this policy is that they'll add more poor people to the number of poor already out there."

And there you have it: To free up revenues to pay debt and to not default, costs have to be cut in a brutal fashion. But there will inevitably be a backlash to that attempt and the rolls of the poor, as the man said, will get larger.

Can we repent from our ways and avoid a similar mess?