NYT’s Writes About The Collapse Of Socialism In Europe

The New York Times, of all papers, has an article today on how the Socialist, cradle to grave, governments are dying a quick death:

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.

Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism.

Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella. They have also translated higher taxes into a cradle-to-grave safety net. “The Europe that protects” is a slogan of the European Union.

But all over Europe governments with big budgets, falling tax revenues and aging populations are experiencing rising deficits, with more bad news ahead.

With low growth, low birthrates and longer life expectancies, Europe can no longer afford its comfortable lifestyle, at least not without a period of austerity and significant changes. The countries are trying to reassure investors by cutting salaries, raising legal retirement ages, increasing work hours and reducing health benefits and pensions.

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“The easy days are over for countries like Greece, Portugal and Spain, but for us, too,” said Laurent Cohen-Tanugi, a French lawyer who did a study of Europe in the global economy for the French government. “A lot of Europeans would not like the issue cast in these terms, but that is the storm we’re facing. We can no longer afford the old social model, and there is a real need for structural reform.”

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Figures show the severity of the problem. Gross public social expenditures in the European Union increased from 16 percent of gross domestic product in 1980 to 21 percent in 2005, compared with 15.9 percent in the United States. In France, the figure now is 31 percent, the highest in Europe, with state pensions making up more than 44 percent of the total and health care, 30 percent.

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The problems are even more acute in the “new democracies” of the euro zone — Greece, Portugal and Spain — that embraced European democratic ideals and that Europe embraced for political reasons in the postwar era, perhaps before their economies were ready. They have built lavish state systems on the back of the euro, but now must change.

Under threat of default, Greece has frozen pensions for three years and drafted a bill to raise the legal retirement age to 65. Greece froze public-sector pay and trimmed benefits for state employees, including a bonus two months of salary. Portugal has cut 5 percent from the salaries of senior public employees and politicians and increased taxes, while canceling big projects; Spain is cutting civil service salaries by 5 percent and freezing pay in 2011 while also chopping public projects.

But all three need to do more to bolster their competitiveness and growth, mostly by changing deeply inflexible employment rules, which can make it prohibitively expensive to hire or fire staff members, keeping unemployment high.

Best line of the article:

In Athens, Mr. Iordanidis, the graduate who makes 800 euros a month in a bookstore, said he saw one possible upside. “It could be a chance to overhaul the whole rancid system,” he said, “and create a state that actually works.”

I’m amazed this appeared at the NYT’s but I doubt the writer, Steven Erlanger, will last long with these kind of pieces. Either way, the article does a great job depicting how the Socialist model is a loser, in a big way. Doc Zero over at Hot Air:

Increasing levels of coercion are necessary to expand the socialist system, and keep wealth producers trapped within it. To maintain popular support, the socialist needs voters to stay angry at designated class enemies. The Obama style of total government control over private businesses tends to turn feral with frightening speed, because it attempts to preserve the illusion of private enterprise, even as the “entrepreneurs” are enslaved to the total state.

The SEIU thugs laying siege to the home of a Bank of America executive are a demonstration of this principle. So are the rioters in Greece, who have degenerated to murdering bank employees, instead of merely terrorizing them.

You might object that the SEIU goons weren’t representatives of the State, while the Greek rioters are supposedly an “anti-government” mob. The truth is that American labor unions, and angry Greek pensioners, have become de facto arms of the State. They are the feral vanguard of a collapsing system, using violence and intimidation to make it clear those not favorably connected to the political power structure will be sacrificed to preserve it, for as long as possible.

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…socialism is miserable. It turns feral because it always makes promises it cannot keep, and the primary skill of a successful politician is the ability to avoid responsibility. As of this writing, it remains the official position of the Democrat Party that not a single one of its members bears any responsibility for the subprime mortgage crisis. Dodd, Frank, and Obama swam in millions of dollars of campaign donations and graft. They blocked audits of Fannie Mae, and gave speeches assuring the country that it was completely solvent. They greeted any suggestion of reform or oversight with furious accusations of greed and racism. None of them have been punished. In fact, they all enjoy more power than ever today, although Dodd’s time is running out.

When these politicians insist they bear no responsibility for the disasters they have engineered, or the failure of their policies, their loyal supporters believe them. The hunt for the “true” villains predictably follows. The authors of the deficit time bomb will never admit they made impossible promises, or knowingly sold out future generations to acquire immediate power. They knew ObamaCare was a ridiculous fraud – their house organ, the New York Times, recently told Greece it should privatize health care to bring down costs. The socialists will never accept responsibility for the system beginning to crash down around them… not while they can designate fall guys for their supporters to hate.

Margaret Thatcher once said:

I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalize everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people.

Greece has proven this to be true. No Socialist economy has ever, or ever will, succeed in creating wealth. Money will be sent to them to help prop them up for a while but in the end it will collapse. As will the Socialist dreams of Obama and friends. Socialism does not work, but I’m afraid there will always be ignorant people who believe in the unicorns, rainbows and lollipops of some fantasy land utopia.

Curt

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