Euro softies, (Greece, Spain, Italy, and now France) are whining about "austerity". Socialism has run out of other people's money. The Softie countries are spending, and want to keep on spending, a good deal more than their tax revenues. Since they joined the Euro, they can't print money, unlike the US. More and more they cannot borrow the money, 'cause nobody in their right mind would give them a loan, for fear the loan won't get paid back. The Germans are the only Euro country with real amounts of money, and the German taxpayers see no reason to give that money away to the softie countries.
About the only things left are to issue IOU's like California did, or drop out of the Euro so they can print the money they want to spend. Nobody is talking about those alternatives. So far, the citizens of the softie countries like the Euro because it holds it's value. They know that savings in lira or drachma or francs are worth less and less as time goes by, whereas savings in Euro's will be worth the same in the future. What the future of IOU's is nobody knows, they don't talk about it.
So, the softie governments have to cut spending or run out of money. This means laying off "workers" from the government payroll, canceling cost of living hikes, freezing wages, and squeezing down pensions. Nobody likes this much.
And nobody is talking about economic growth, which is the only way out. Was I running a country (I'm not) I'd make a list of all the industries in my country and rank them by size. Start with the big ones and see what could be done to make them grow. Things like removing export restraints (ITAR regulations for instance), issuing needed permits, rationalizing the tax burden, making well educated labor available, encouraging research and development, fostering competition, improving transportation, lowering electric power prices, and publicizing quality control measures (things like Appellation Controlee and ISO 9000)
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