July 1, 2010
As Europeans start to feel the effects of cuts in social welfare benefits, popular anger is spreading. In Spain, where new austerity measures coincide with a 20 percent unemployment rate, protesters disrupted transit in Madrid this week. In Greece, strikers shut down public services. Ireland, which the government has slashed pay for nurses, professors and other public workers by up to 20 percent, is faced with more belt-tightening.
Defenders of the cuts say that the pain is necessary, and that even the stable German and Nordic economies have to follow suit, if the global markets are to be reassured. But advocates of the social-democratic model ask: Why should the Germans or Scandinavians have to ditch their pensions, health care and vacations, if — unlike the Irish, the Spanish and the Greeks — they’ve managed to pay for them all these years?
* Tom Geoghegan, labor lawyer and author
* John Cotter, University College Dublin
* Veronique de Rugy, George Mason University
* Gayle Allard, economist, IE Business School in Madrid
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1 comment:
Spyridon Tsamaidis, wrote,
- "They" have NOT managed to pay, The State pays with very heavy taxation.
- Based on mutual trust, the fewer questions asked, the better the services appear.......
- On the other hand, Politicians, based on "mutual" global distrust, find a good opportunity to cut back on many illogical benefits they have spread out for years either due "social" reasons or for buying votes.
- Some "new" ideas have to come up, perhaps, based on , "there is no free meal", or, on, "you get what you pay for",........
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