November 5, 2011
With Greece struggling to form a government that can force harsh austerity measures onto a weary public, Europe is in usual form, taking a couple of steps toward solving its fiscal crisis and then a couple of steps backward. Washington, meanwhile, is hoping that the latest deficit-reduction committee in Congress can succeed where others have failed.
This cycle of bureaucracy and gridlock has been repeating itself for months now. It is tempting to blame feckless politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, and that would not be entirely wrong.
But the frailty of politicians is not the full story. The fact is that most of the industrialized world — Europe, the United States, Japan, too — is in a difficult economic bind. There are no simple solutions that would quickly win the approval of citizens if only politicians were willing to try them.
Most voters in these places have yet to come to grips with the notion that they have promised themselves benefits that, at current tax rates, they cannot afford. Their economies have been growing too slowly, for too long, to pay for the coming bulge of retirees.
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