Europe in the ’70s, here we come?

Congressional leaders and President Obama are ignoring the perils of overspending to which European countries succumbed in the 1970s. The recent actions and proposals of President Obama and Congressional leaders violate both fiscal responsibility and basic political restraint, and are setting the stage for a full-fledged public finance crisis.
In the 1960s and 1970s, almost every European country went too far in expanding its entitlement programs in the quest to create a comprehensive welfare state. Enthused by years of vigorous economic growth, a healthy-looking demographic structure, and a spirit of the times that vigorously favored a pro-active social policy, Western European policymakers unwittingly set their countries’ entitlement programs on a collision course with reality. When the oil shock hit European economies in 1973, public finances across Western Europe were on the hook for enormous liabilities: as growth rates slowed and unemployment rose, public expenditures soared. Suddenly, what had seemed affordable under rosy assumptions was no longer affordable under the new economic constraints.

Oh, good, I’m looking forward to Arthur Scargill trying to take over the country, miners rioting, and the police cracking heads. What? I mean, that’s how we got London Calling…

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.