The Decline of the European Welfare State
by Jeffrey Miron on May 24th, 2010
7 Comments
PARIS — Across Western Europe, the “lifestyle superpower,” the assumptions and gains of a lifetime are suddenly in doubt. The deficit crisis that threatens the euro has also undermined the sustainability of the European standard of social welfare, built by left-leaning governments since the end of World War II.
Sounds like the self-satisfied gloating of some libertarian blogger, right? Actually, it’s the New York Times.
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Randolph R.
Don´t tell me, I live in Europe now and tired of those sirens song. Don´t see a date when this thing finishes.
brian
The various forms of leftist government are never able to generate enough wealth to be self-sustaining. They are parasitic forms of government that live off the sweat of those who believe in personal responsibility. They all are in different stages of dying; the further you go to the left the faster your society crumbles.
Eventually you reach a critical point where enough of your makers say “screw it” and the takers outnumber them.
.
Jess Austin
They are parasitic forms of government that live off the sweat of those who believe in personal responsibility.
This is somewhat unfair to leftist forms of government. All authority, whether that of warlords, kings, emperors, consuls, mafioso, mullahs, parliamentarians, or civil servants, exact tribute from productive people (leave aside whether the productive are so because of their beliefs; probably they’re just hungry). Theoretically, “in return” government encourages a stable societal organization upon which the productive depend for their safety. In many cases, it’s far from obvious that the trade is a fair one. After all, it is rarely voluntary.
That said, I would probably rather be subject to the whims of a bloated parasitic bureaucracy than those of a theocratic warlord. Even so, confusion results when we lament governments that do exactly what governments do. Maybe you meant this with your “further… to the left” line, but I would emphasize that there is no amount of rightward movement that could somehow stop this dynamic.
brian
“That said, I would probably rather be subject to the whims of a bloated parasitic bureaucracy than those of a theocratic warlord.”
Jess,
Your choices aren’t between a leftist government and a warlord.
For example, in this country we could actually reinstitute the free markets and limited government we started out with.
Leftist governments all end up ultimately strangling the increasingly small group of citizens they have who actually produce wealth.
Greece, for example, has untold numbers on the dole, it’s entire population retiring in its 50’s, and 1/3 of its citizens working for the government and receiving huge pensions (despite no wealth production from them). That’s an awfully large chunk of the population for everyone else to spoon-feed, especially given their low birthrates.
Any form of democracy in which politicians are allowed to buy votes in the present with debt it sends to the future is ultimately doomed.
I’ve become convinced that democracy won’t ultimately work unless the governments are constitutionally restricted (with teeth) to a balanced budget that is a small fixed percentage of the GDP. That way in a recession government has to shrink too. Without such restrictions an ever-increasing chunk of the population will sell their votes in exchange for politicians to steal from an ever-decreasing chunk of the population that is actually producing wealth.
People were actually wondering how to solve this problem when democracies were first springing up, so it’s not like no one saw it coming.
Shakes
“More broadly, many across Europe say the Continent will have to adapt to fiscal and demographic change, because social peace depends on it. “Europe won’t work without that,” said Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister, referring to the state’s protective role. “In Europe we have nationalism and racism in a politicized manner, and those parties would have exploited grievances if not for our welfare state,” he said. “It’s a matter of national security, of our democracy.” ”
———————–
I thought that passage from the article was quite interesting. The guy is saying that they only have peace because of the welfare state and you have to pay the different factions off to keep them at bay.
I imagine that he is largely correct.
happyjuggler0
One of the reasons why nationalists and racists appeal to some in the political arena is precisely because “they” (whoever they happen to be in any particular place) are taking money/jobs/other from “us” (whomever that may be) via government.
Kill the welfare state and you reduce a lot of those misgivings against “them”.
End job protections that make it expensive to fire, and you increase the willingness of employers to hire, and you reduce a lot of those misgivings against “them” taking “our” jobs.
Reduce or eliminate investment taxes such as the capital gains tax and the corporate income tax and you’ll have new companies creating new jobs, and old companies expanding and creating new jobs, and you’ll reduce the misgivings against “them”.
The social welfare state magnifies racism and nationalism; it doesn’t keep it at bay. At any rate, it is unsustainable, so they need to find a way to get along without it.
dfvzazan
happyjuggler0 is right. He also provides an eagerly anticipated segue into Rand Paul’s recent comments. (I would love for Prof Miron to address this.) Racism was propagated for many years by gov’t institutions (Jim Crow laws). And consequently it took gov’t legislation to dismantle this mandated, publically funded discrimination. I think libertarian philosophy, as Paul suggests, is the best alternative to non-institutional/private bias. On the other hand, gov’t has no authority to dictate personal interactions, as CRA of 1964 did. Libertarians should stand by Paul’s statements. Curiously, many libertarians have remained silent as Paul sacrificed himself for the cause.
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