Tuesday, May 28, 2013

What Happens When Welfare Stops?

Will the western world end if welfare ends? That seems to be the message that we are hearing from Germany.  Can they manage their way out of the crisis? Probably not.  It looks like the countries of Europe are so tied to welfare that ending them would end up with horrendous results.  


We wonder what Europe will look like if they give in to the youth movement and continue welfare from birth to death.  Will they be able to afford it? What happens when they can no longer afford the drain?

There are no positives here, only a lot of downside.  

What do you see?

Conservative Tom


Germany Sees 'Revolution' if Welfare Model Scrapped

Tuesday, 28 May 2013 09:02 AM

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German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned on Tuesday that failure to win the battle against youth unemployment could tear Europe apart, while abandoning the continent's welfare model in favor of tougher U.S. standards would cause "revolution."

Germany, along with France and Italy, backed urgent action to rescue a generation of young Europeans who fear they will not find jobs, with youth unemployment in the EU standing at nearly one in four, more than twice the adult rate.

"We need to be more successful in our fight against youth unemployment, otherwise we will lose the battle for Europe's unity," Schaeuble said.

While Germany insists on the importance of budget consolidation, Schaeuble spoke of the need to preserve Europe's welfare model.

If U.S. welfare standards were introduced in Europe, "we would have revolution, not tomorrow, but on the very same day," Schaeuble told a conference in Paris.

"We have to rescue an entire generation of young people who are scared. We have the best-educated generation and we are putting them on hold. This is not acceptable," Italian Labor minister Enrico Giovannini said.

Germany in particular, weary of a backlash as many in crisis-hit European countries blame it for austerity, has over the past weeks taken steps to tackle unemployment, striking bilateral deals with Spain and Portugal.

German ministers told the conference that, to help young people find jobs, Europe must continue on the path of structural reforms to boost its competitiveness as well as make good use of available EU funds, including 6 billion euros that leaders have set aside for youth employment for 2014-20.

While all agreed on the urgency needed to tackle youth unemployment, ministers offered no concrete plans, insisting Europe must be pragmatic and work on various strands.

Schaeuble said this was why Germany had also decided to strike deals with countries such as Spain and Greece.

"Let's be honest, there is no quick fix, there is no grand plan," said Werner Hoyer, head the European Investment Bank.

Together with ministers, he said policies aimed at boosting youth employment must focus on small and medium-sized enterprises as they are the main entry point to the labor market for most.

More than half of Spain's under 25-year-olds are jobless, as are nearly 40 percent in Portugal.

In Greece, youth unemployment shot to a record 64 percent in February.

In March 2013, the lowest youth unemployment rates were in Germany and Austria, both below 8 percent, highlighting the wide disparities within the EU.

The youth employment crisis will be a central theme of a June EU leaders' summit, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has invited EU labor ministers to a youth unemployment conference in Berlin on July 3.

Following up on an idea aired earlier this month, French President Francois Hollande urged the eurozone to work towards a joint economic government with its own budget which could take on specific projects including tackling youth unemployment.
© 2013 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.


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4 comments:

  1. Youth unemployment is not the problem. It is only a symptom of the problem. Let's just take Spain as an example. Here is a graph that show their unemployment rate history…

    http://www.google.com/search?q=unemployment+rate+Spain&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

    Notice it was steadily declining until Wall Street banks wrecked the global economy. Since 2008, it has grown steadily from around 7% to 27% today. In Europe and the U.S., we are not going to solve the youth unemployment problem with welfare. That is just putting a band-aid on it, and the band-aid will be ripped off with the next Wall Street derivatives scam. The Wall Street banks are now 30% bigger than 2008 when they were "too big to fail." Elizabeth Warren asked Lew a week or so ago about breaking up the big banks before they do it to us again, and he basically said we have nothing to worry about. It's all under control.

    --David (OWS)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think that there is more reasons than the banks causing the world wide depression. Part of the problem are the over-generous benefit plans that European nations have! Now we can join them when ObamaCrap Care will add trillions of dollars of debt. Hey, why not join Europe. And when the economies of the world crash, who will be there to pick up the pieces?

      Delete
  2. The CBO just released its study on the distribution of tax expenditures. You can download it here without reading the article…

    http://blogs.marketwatch.com/election/2013/05/29/cbo-report-shows-congress-can-limit-tax-breaks-for-rich-van-hollen-says/

    The most revealing statistic in the report is Figure 3. It shows what percentage of its income each quintile receives from the federal government. This can be thought of as the government handing out money to people. The top 1% gets a higher percentage of its total income from the government than does the poorest quintile. Note I am talking about percentage of income, not absolute dollars. We do have a welfare state, but the government favors its welfare on the top 1%, not the bottom 20%. Read the report.

    --David (OWS)

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Now we can join them when ObamaCrap Care will add trillions of dollars of debt."

    Not true, according to CBO estimates. There is more revenue than spending in the law -- repeal of Obamacare would have ADDED $109 billion to the deficit over 10 years. You don't believe it, but that's according to CBO.

    Many countries in Europe have more welfare than the U.S. (if you mistakenly define "welfare" as only aid to the poor -- see CBO report on tax expenditures cited above). Yet countries like Ireland, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc. were not devastated economies prior to 2008. Neither was the U.S. prior to the 2000's decade before Wall Street caused the global financial collapse. Let's put the blame for this mess where it belongs!

    --David (OWS)

    ReplyDelete

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