The world has watched in dismay as Greece has edged ever closer to default on its debts in recent months.
Greece has literally spent its way to the brink of collapse. Over long years, its lawmakers have been unwilling to deny one increase after another in welfare state spending. But they went further: Rather than at least acknowledge the unsustainable cost of all that spending, they used dubious accounting to hide the cost.
Now, the costs can no longer be hidden. Greece's creditors are at the door. Other European nations have already massively bailed out Greece, but to little avail. Protests have turned violent. There is even talk among a few Greeks that the way out of their country's financial mess is to demand reparations from Germany for the Nazi occupation of Greece during World War II!
Many fear Greece will soon go into default, with frightening implications not only for the Greeks but for all Europe and, by extension, for the United States. That has ordinary Greeks angry and frustrated, but many still do not see the connection between their nation's reckless spending and the current crisis.
"It is the shock of undercut expectations, the loss of benefits and prospects once taken for granted ...," The Associated Press noted in a recent analysis. "The future is a void."
Joblessness is on the rise in Greece, and funding for health care programs and even law enforcement is simply drying up.
In a scenario that looks all too much like the direction in which the United States is heading, Greece is discovering that making all sorts of expensive promises -- on health care or anything else -- is very different from actually having the money to fulfill those promises long term.
Of course, Greece is trying to dig out of its big-spending crisis. It has imposed massive and painful austerity measures, such as higher taxes, reduced services and layoffs of some government workers who had assumed they had lifetime security in their jobs.
While any nation obviously has to have some number of government workers, Greece seems to have forgotten that government cannot create wealth and revenue. Every government worker must be sustained by the private sector. When there are too many employees in government compared with the private sector, productivity falls and the economy struggles to sustain itself.
Neither can government provide services that aren't funded by the private sector.
That's what makes the United States' own spending patterns so alarming. The fact that ours is a big, powerful nation does not mean we cannot fall prey to the same sort of crisis that Greece is enduring today.
We have a $14.8 trillion national debt that is growing fast, yet there have not been remotely adequate efforts in Congress to slash the spending that created that debt.
Like the Greeks, many of us want "everything" from the government, but we just assume "somebody else" will pay for it.
That is a dangerously false assumption. We are spending money we do not have and becoming more and more indebted to foreign nations, including some that are hostile to our interests.
Will we follow Greece toward collapse, or will we take action in time to avert catastrophe?
Sadly, that remains an open question.