This is not the end of the world, everyone. Nations in Europe are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. The United States cannot resolve its debt debate, failing to raise the debt ceiling
If markets do correct, as French Economist Frederic Bastiat calmly asserted, then this is the most massive and necessary market correction in human history.
For two hundred years, national governments have instituted large entitlement programs and the horrendous debt which they incur in order to consolidate power. European states purchased the agreement of rural and conservative interests in their lands by offering state subsidies and handouts, like social security, if they would relinquish ancient land ties and local autonomies.
Recently, political parties have bought votes by promising to take from the wealthy and pass out the legally ill-gotten largess out to the growing base of tax-exempt citizens. Government has insidiously colluded with public workers to offer handsome perks and exorbitant benefits on the public dime. No one complains when it is not their specific dime getting pilfered, yet when everyone collectively suffers under the timely failure of wealth distribution, the people of a nation protest.
This Big Government model was bound to be unsustainable, no was bound to unsustainability. Those with money get tired of being forced to lose their wealth to those who have done nothing, slowly entrapped in the wicked entitlement mentality that only demands more. As sources of independent wealth dry up or drive away, the state depends on tricky accounting, subtle tax increases, and ultimately extensive borrowing. These dysfunctional maneuvers only drown the state in deeper obligations, steeper paying plans, and ultimately bankruptcy.
What does a state do when it cannot pay its bills? Will municipalities declare war on their own communities and attempt to seize from so impoverished that they cannot provide for themselves? If individual tax-payer are bled dry, what hope do state and federal agencies have?
There is no escape from the one grand conclusions pressing on liberal, conservative, and undeclared: Big Government isn't working. It cannot function. It cannot sustain itself. From overtaxed citizens to crippled national governments, everyone is learning the hard way that depending on a growing government to meet the needs of the future was a foolhardy gamble from the beginning. Banking on the state to honor its obligations because by law the state is obligated to pay up no matter how dire the economic conditions–that is simply a ludicrous, hollow threat when there is no money to spend, no resources to print currency, and no buyers willing to settle for promises to pay later.
Big Government isn't working. No longer will conservatives demand change through emotional and moral appeal. Dragging stocks, falling revenues, slowing growth, the vast mistrust between borrower and lender, all sound the death knell of the Big Government Behemoth.