Europe's Entitlement Reckoning

[carpro]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204190704577026194205495230.html

Europe's Entitlement Reckoning
From Greece to Italy to France, the welfare state is in crisis.

In the European economic crisis, all roads lead through Rome. The markets have raised the price of financing Italy's mammoth debt to new highs, and on Tuesday Silvio Berlusconi became the second euro-zone prime minister, after Greece's George Papandreou, to resign this week. His departure may keep the world's eighth largest economy solvent for the time being, but it hardly addresses the root of the problem.

In Italy, as in Greece, Spain and Portugal and eventually France, the welfare-entitlement state has hit a wall. Successive governments on the Continent, right and left, have financed generous entitlements with high taxes and towering piles of debt. Their economies have failed to grow fast enough to keep up, and last year the money started to run out. The reckoning has arrived.

This is the road liberals, marxists, and their patron saint , the democrat party, want us to take.

Insanity.

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

It is worse than insanity, but it goes much deeper than blaming it on entitlement. The eurozone was broken from day one. It never took into the diversity of economy and culture. The euro has been dead for about three years, only life support has kept its heart beating.

I don't trust Berlusconi. I will believe he is gone when he is gone.

Comparing this situation to the US is apples and kumquats. The EU never was a union like the Unites States. The problem is that EU leaders have been afraid of the long term repercussions of a euro collapse so they have been propping up the weaker economies. The weaker countries have taken care of that by letting corruption go unchecked because they all knew/thought that Germany and France would not let the euro collapse. That was okay with tiny economies like Greece and Ireland, but Berlusconi is the epitome of corruption and Italy is the third biggest economy in Europe.

The US federal constitutional system has huge advantages over the splintered economies and cultures of Europe.

However, the US problem is much worse than just the democrats supposedly desiring a socialist state. I don't think they are that purposed. Both major parties are corrupt and their only motivation is personal greed. Neither party has the best interest of the people in mind. When the US system breaks it will be for much different reasons than the EU.

Only one thing is common - corruption.

 

[Salty]

C4K,

Would you say the current EU (eg Euro) set-up is similar to what the (US) Articles of Confederation was?

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

C4K,

Would you say the current EU (eg Euro) set-up is similar to what the (US) Articles of Confederation was?

Not even close - it is a very loose union. The only thing really tying it together is the euro.

Now the new tighter eurozone being worked on by Germany and France may very well approach that.

 

[Matt Black]

Agree with what Roger has said. The basic problem with the Euro has been and always will be that you can't have monetary union without fiscal union (hence why the Irish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Greek governments have been able to spend shedloads of money they haven't got) and you can't have fiscal union without political union. So the Eurozone (which is not the entire EU; several countries, including the UK :smilewinkgrin: are not in it) countries have two choices - either lose the Euro or lose their national independence. The latter looks more likely ATM and, since the Germans control the pursestrings, they will get to run the show. Seems like Merkel will achieve by 'soft power' what Kaiser Bill and old Adolf failed to achieve by military force...Ho hum...

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

Agree with what Roger has said. The basic problem with the Euro has been and always will be that you can't have monetary union without fiscal union (hence why the Irish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Greek governments have been able to spend shedloads of money they haven't got) and you can't have fiscal union without political union. So the Eurozone (which is not the entire EU; several countries, including the UK :smilewinkgrin: are not in it) countries have two choices - either lose the Euro or lose their national independence. The latter looks more likely ATM and, since the Germans control the pursestrings, they will get to run the show. Seems like Merkel will achieve by 'soft power' what Kaiser Bill and old Adolf failed to achieve by military force...Ho hum...

I am on record, and my former students can attest to it, that I said back in the late 80s that Germany would eventually conquer Europe through economic rather than military means. It looks like I was right

Here's to the euromark!

 

[Matt Black]

They could have done it a lot sooner - way back last century - if they hadn't started those two world wars....

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

They could have done it a lot sooner - way back last century - if they hadn't started those two world wars....

I find it interesting the Churchill, after WWII, looked forward to some sort of European Union. He insisted way back then that the UK would only take part if they had some sort of special status and that they would never join a European currency.

 

[Matt Black]

Quote from the fictional Sir Humphrey Appleby from Yes, Prime Minister:

British foreign policy has remained unchanged for the last 500 years. Our aim is to divide the French and the Germans

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

British foreign policy has remained unchanged for the last 500 years. Our aim is to divide the French and the Germans

Love it

Part of the issue here is when either Europe or the US try to view the other's politics through their own eyes. Being American and living here almost 17 years it is obvious that neither 'side' really understands the perspective of the other. I see misrepresentations of both sides by both sides, and this is just one example of this fact.

As for the UK, I can almost sense their 'smugness' for staying out of the euromess (No meanness intended Matt and other UK friends )

 

[Salty]

Love it

Part of the issue here is when either Europe or the US try to view the other's politics through their own eyes....it is obvious that neither 'side' really understands the perspective of the other. I see misrepresentations of both sides by both sides, and this is just one example of this fact. ... )

"Part of the issue here is when either DEMOCRATS or the REPUBLICANS try to view the other's politics through their own eyes....it is obvious that neither 'side' really understands the perspective of the other. I see misrepresentations of both sides by both sides, and this is just one example of this fact. ... "

JUST SAYING....

 

[carpro]

Roger didn't waste any time taking this thread off topic. the Euro has hardly anything to do with the entitlement problems of many countries in Europe. The EU did not turn France, Italy , etc. into welfare states. They did it themselves before the EU was formed.

This is the crux of the matter:

Successive governments on the Continent, right and left, have financed generous entitlements with high taxes and towering piles of debt. Their economies have failed to grow fast enough to keep up, and last year the money started to run out. The reckoning has arrived.

 

[Matt Black]

As for the UK, I can almost sense their 'smugness' for staying out of the euromess (No meanness intended Matt and other UK friends )

We're still exposed to this mess even if we're out of the Euro, unfortunately.

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

Roger didn't waste any time taking this thread off topic. the Euro has hardly anything to do with the entitlement problems of many countries in Europe. The EU did not turn France, Italy , etc. into welfare states. They did it themselves before the EU was formed.

This is the crux of the matter:

Far from off topic the thoughts expressed counter the false ideas spread by the author of the article in the OP.

Entitlements are not the issue as he contends. Entitlements have been part and parcel of these nations for many decades. Europe is in her mess not because, as he suggests, entitlement programmes, but because of the euro.

His claim that 'this is where America is going' is false, because the collapse of these countries is corrupt spending of other nation's money.

 

[carpro]

Far from off topic the thoughts expressed counter the false ideas spread by the author of the article in the OP.

Entitlements are not the issue as he contends. Entitlements have been part and parcel of these nations for many decades. Europe is in her mess not because, as he suggests, entitlement programmes, but because of the euro.

His claim that 'this is where America is going' is false, because the collapse of these countries is corrupt spending of other nation's money.

Sounds more like an opinion than a fact.

Entitlements are exactly the issue he says they are. The Euro problem is a straw man on your part to avoid the real facts.

Unless of course, you have some proof that entitlements have nothing to do with it, as you opine.

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

Sounds more like an opinion than a fact.

Entitlements are exactly the issue he says they are. The Euro problem is a straw man on your part to avoid the real facts.

Unless of course, you have some proof that entitlements have nothing to do with it, as you opine.

Both the author of the article and I have opinions. His view is no more fact than mine.

I missed where I said that entitlements had nothing to do with the current situation. Everything plays a part, but entitlements are not the major issue. In fact, I think I said earlier that the issue goes much deeper than entitlements.

There has been unreal corruption in the broken states of Europe. Rather than entitlements the money has gone to line the pockets of politicians here.

BTW and FYI, euro is like dollar, it is not capitalised.

 

[carpro]

Entitlements are very much at the core of the problem.

All the euro did was make it easier for countries carrying an unsustainable entitlement load to borrow money to continue their charade.

The bill has come due.

Greece, Italy , France , and Ireland have the most pervasive nanny states and will fall first dragging the EU with them and destroying the euro in the process.

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

France, along with Germany, is one of the two economies keeping the euro afloat.

Since I am a little familiar with another example on your list lets focus on that.

How has Ireland's status as a 'pervasive nanny state' done more damage to her economy than the corrupt alliance between Fianna Fail and the land developers over the last twent years?

I have a couple of other questions for later.

 

[Matt Black]

Sounds more like an opinion than a fact.

Entitlements are exactly the issue he says they are. The Euro problem is a straw man on your part to avoid the real facts.

Unless of course, you have some proof that entitlements have nothing to do with it, as you opine.

If 'entitlements', as you call our welfare states, were the problem, our economies would have collapsed decades ago (the Welfare State in the UK has been in existence since the 1940s and Germany's for much longer than that). Roger is correct: the real problem is the Greeks and others effectively lying on their 'Euro-club application forms' and then continuing to lie about their true state once they were in the club.

 

[freeatlast]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204190704577026194205495230.html



This is the road liberals, marxists, and their patron saint , the democrat party, want us to take.

Insanity.

We are already on that road and it was taken by both parties.