End Of The Age Of Entitlements?

Do you too notice what I see (or think I see)? It's the decline and fall of the social welfare state in Europe. The welfare states of Europe that rose out of the ashes of the Second World War are now facing destruction because of the debt crisis that resulted from too many entitlements being given to their citizens. And it all began to crumble in Greece. The average age of retirement in Greece is 53, thanks to a generous benefit system and pensions for state employees. How can any nation support such a system? Well, there are even worse entitlement conditions in other Euroepan nations.

Germany's too generous unemployment benefit provisions and free university education, France's need to raise the retirement age for workers from 60 to 62, the crazy Spanish payments to parents of newborns, the English economy bankrupted by extravagant freebies and on and on. Nearly every western European nation has too few taxpayers and too many welfare recipients. The economic meltdown has exposed Europe as the house of economic cards it is.
So this raises the question. Is this next age to be, not the Age of Entitlements, but rather, The Age of The Ending Welfare State?

Hampered by the financial cost built into the welfare state and by the psychological and financial disincentives built into telling adults the government is mommy and daddy and that one may be irresponsible financially if they wish, European economies began to slow down under the burden of more and more entitlements. The high unemployment that is common in many European countries is now a permanent fixture.

So Europe and its politicians now have no choice but to reduce their expenditures on welfare (which is about half the budget in the typical European nation). The addicted to entitlement Europeans will not relish working longer, harder and with lower pay and benefits while paying the same outrageously high taxes they now pay. Have mercy on the European politicians who tell their citizens the facts and start making the cuts we are already seeing in some western European nations. But let's hope they do it.

The U.S., Canada and other capitalist nations tht have followed the awful European model, who have chosen the entitlement route in recent years, had better take notice of what has happened in Europe and how it has made Europe effete in so many ways. The welfare state in Europe won't totally disappear, but it may now be more targeted to real needs and for those who benefit from it, not luxuriate in it.

I salute the economic meltdown that has forced European nations to grow up and start acting like real countries again. I hope my own nation will take the same path.