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By mainstream media accounts, the presidential election in France and parliamentary elections in Greece on May 6 were overwhelming verdicts against "austerity" measures being implemented in Europe.
I don't know what Hollande is talking about when he raises his voice against Austerity. First off, austerity was never really tried. Not really.
In France for example, according to Eurostat, annual expenditures have actually increased from €1.095 trillion to €1.118 trillion in 2011. In fact spending has increased every single year for the past decade. The debt there increased too from €1.932 trillion €1.987 trillion last year, just as it did every year before.
Real "austere". The French spent more, and they borrowed more.
The deficit in France did decrease by about €34 billion in 2011, but that was largely because of a €56.6 billion surge in tax revenues. Again, there were no spending cuts. Zero.
Yet incoming socialist president François Hollande claimed after his victory over Nicolas Sarkozy that he would bring an end to this mythical austerity: "We will bring back Europe on a track for jobs, growth and the future… We're no longer doomed to austerity."
This is just a willful, purposeful distortion. What Europe needs is competitiveness and entrepreneurship not the socialist rhetoric of Job and Growth. what socialists mean by job is paying people wages for doing little and growth is maintaining institutions that are not productive.
sooner or later Europe will realise that the current lifestyle could not be maintained if they are not competitive. small and medium size businesses should be encouraged. entrepreneurship and hardwork should not be penalised by burdensome taxations. social welfare should be reformed and the public attitude toward claiming benefits needs to be changed. curbing welfare fraud is central to achieve this aim.
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Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Is Europe Saying No to Austerity?
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4 comments:
Great take on European spending. I agree completely
I am person who has been homeless 3-4 times living an unstable life, recovering from an incurable medical condition with medication that is keeping me alive and recovering from a complete breakdown following my fathers death and my plunge into fatigue or perhaps disease progression, smoking and alcohol. My dad was an alcoholic as well.
Things in life are complex to manage, I try not to judge my family or my parents for being where I am. But the changes in the welfare system are another layer of complexity and they seem to be covering an ideological objective to reduce welfare spending, which means those who are sick like me are going to be treated more harshly to justify an entitlement to state care.
At the same time i have to manage a medical condition that is not going to change or improve or be cured. In my mind i am struggling to justify whether I have a right to live at all considering the fatigue and pressure to derive value from vocation or work that I simply cannot do at the intensity expected of me.
The system is asking me to justify my right benefits and help.
I then ask myself whether I can justify my right to live if am treated in such a degrading fashion measured in terms of value by what I have the capacity to do or not do or sustain doing as a worker.
If I have no capacity as a worker or as capable being I am led to believe that my further degradation to not be entitled to help and support translates that I have no value as a human being.
HOw far am I now from the conclusion that I don't want to live in this world and not just because of the values placed upon me by society but because of the fact that this world has reduced itself to incivility and monstrous proportions.
In cases where it's been tried, switching universal benefits to means tested has been more expensive than just sticking with universal would have been.
I have been unemployed in the past, in the eighties, and so know what it is like. The problem is humanity, however, because the system was set up with laudable aims but a visible minority have seen it as a system they can abuse, by never working and churning out kids who will never work, to the detriment of those people who are genuinely in need and now feeling the brunt of the changes.
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