The May Day Party

I can't believe another month is down and we've hit May Day.

That's the term for the ancient Northern Hemisphere festival celebrating the halfway point between the Northern Hemisphere's Spring equinox and June solstice. 

It has no relevance to Australia at all but the day was hijacked to become a festival of socialist groups.

In 1889 an international federation of socialist groups and trade unions designated May 1 as a day in support of workers. That was in response to the Haymarket riots which were a bloody confrontation between police and protestors in Chicago.

In that regard, not much seems to have changed.

We've still got violent protestors and police forces that seem unable to impartially uphold the law.

Instead, the police seem to turn a blind eye to some illegality based on politics, race or gender of the offender while shooting rubber bullets at those who (justly) protest against the State's great lie.

Looking at what's going on around the Western world, it's easy to think society is descending into a dystopian nightmare.

It's as if an entire generation is intolerant and angry about anything and anyone that differs from their indoctrinated and socialist world view.

They'll embrace fiction as truth, as long as it is written by Leftist politicians and not J.K Rowling.

Here's what I think is happening and I've drawn these conclusions thanks to my Spanish conversations with several tutors based in Argentina.

In Argentina, the socialists promised decades of free stuff that basically stuffed the economy and Argentina's future.

However, anyone trying to take those unaffordable benefits away was thrown on the political scrap heap as the populace (and corrupt politicians) always wanted more to cover the economic crimes of the past.

Eventually, reality hit home and an entire generation of young people realised they had no chance of fulfilling the most basic dreams - like buying a home.

One of my tutors told me that she doesn't know the price of anything in the supermarket because they are never the same from one day to the next.

That's because inflation is around 20 per cent per month.

She can't go without bread or eggs or milk while a chocolate bar is an unaffordable luxury. That's not surprising because the monthly wage of an educated Argentinian is only around USD 300.

How does anyone in that situation ever hope to buy a home, or a car or a business?

When people have no hope, they finally twig that something isn't right. That's why the anarchist libertarianism of Javier Milei won such support in the recent Presidential election.

The old socialists who milked the system didn't support him but the the generations left to fall behind certainly did.

Australia is a long way from that sort of political revolution but we are certainly on the path. Many young Aussies can't make ends meet. Housing is unaffordable and basic staples (like beef) are becoming luxuries.

Wages go up due to unions and politicians buying votes and then prices rise more. That drives business to invest in technology to protect their profits, resulting in less workers, all while the government is intent on bringing million more to our nation.

Government's then throw subsidies at the problems, in an attempt to solving a crisis of their making. These mostly end up in the hands of big business.

Employment law is becoming a wealth hazard for business owners, while red, blue, green and black tape are mummifying the economy.

It suggests to me that the worst is yet to come,, because the populace is not ready to accept the perpetual party has run out of fizz.

Instead, they'll send a message to the politicians that they need to do another run to the money printing Dan Murphy's to keep the show going.

Trust me when I say every political party elected to government will heed that call.

None will want to tell the people to accept a great hangover is the price of future good times.

It takes an entire generation who haven't had the pleasure of a party in the first place to make that substantive change.

"Imagine how much capital a country like Argentina might attract - if instead of defaulting seriatim and affecting a pose of anger toward creditors, it borrowed responsibly and honoured its obligations."
Paul Singer