"In today’s Wall Street Journal there are two articles that seem to be completely disconnected but are really linked at the core. One is titled “Health System Reflects Greece’s Ills” which summarizes Greece’s public sector health policy:
Like nearly all Greeks, Mr. Gianakouras was covered by a state social security fund, which provided $13,6000 for the hospital bill. There was just one more thing: Mr. Gianakouras said he gave his surgeon “black money” – $5000 Euros in cash – to perform the operation.
‘If you don’t pay’, he said, ‘you don’t get anything done’."..................................
"A different article discusses the “penalty” faced by SEC workers for their failure to spot the Bernie Madoff fraud, titled “SEC Discipline over Madoff” which can be easily summarized in the first paragraph:
The SEC admitted Friday that it has disciplined eight employees over their handling of the $50 billion Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme without firing any of the workers.
In one of the most obvious cases of gross governmental negligence (there are entire documentaries about individuals that tried to bring Madoff’s scam to light and were ignored by the SEC employees so I won’t summarize them here), there is NO CONSEQUENCE for these workers for their failures. "
Socialism brings widespread corruption by public employees and officials. Nothing can be done in a socialist country without greasing the palm of someone. It is bad enough in the United States whenever you deal with a government agency and it will become much worse as our industries are taken over by "Uncle".
