The European Disease

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How do you benefit from increasing GDP if you don't have a job?

You don't

The social safety net - welfare, the dole, free medical care, etc.

You can't really live on unemployment benifit. Besides unless you're actually looking for a job you don't get any most countries. You can't just quit working because you feel like it and expect other people to pay everything for you. Free healthcare (and exactly how this works is very, very different in different countries) isn't really relavent to this IMO.

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Rubbish. At least they have work. Mass unemployment is a great social evil; that you can't understand this just shows how out of touch with reality you are.

[Jens]

This article is utter rubish
Denmark, which probably is one of the most wellfarish nations in the world happen to have low unemplyment rates (5,8) a decent growth rate (2,1) and all the social benefits, labour unions (union rate around 85-90%) and all the other things that the article decribes as cripling to the European economies. The problems in Germany (all the other countries doesn't really matter, France and GB included) is the same as in Japan. Too rigid a labour marked and too big and unflexible companies

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Too rigid a labour marked and too big and unflexible companies

Exactly

[Jens]

Too rigid a labour marked and too big and unflexible companies

Exactly

Am I wrong if social tensions could be decribed as the major obsticle in GB? Rich gettoes with little or no understanding for the poorer parts of the country and and a group of poor with no change of ever getting an education and a decent job?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Am I wrong if social tensions could be decribed as the major obsticle in GB? Rich gettoes with little or no understanding for the poorer parts of the country and and a group of poor with no change of ever getting an education and a decent job?

Up to a point, yes. I forget the exact quote but Orwell was spot on when he described Britain as the most class ridden country under the sun (or something like that).

It's not really the case anymore that there's a large group of people with no chance of a good job etc... but that's a very recent change (although the fact that that was the case at all is fairly recent) as over the past 8 years there's been something of a quiet revolution as far as dealing with the poor goes (minimum wage, the new deal (which has reduced youth unemployment by over a million), new deal for communities etc etc) which has been pretty sucessful overall; the general idea is to get people back to work (which, by and large, is what they want) and it wouldn't actually have been possible if the labour market wasn't flexible etc.
Still a lot to do though; and a problem is that most of it is reversable (both main opposition parties favour scrapping the new deal for example).

[opebo]

The social safety net - welfare, the dole, free medical care, etc.

You can't really live on unemployment benifit. Besides unless you're actually looking for a job you don't get any most countries. You can't just quit working because you feel like it and expect other people to pay everything for you. Free healthcare (and exactly how this works is very, very different in different countries) isn't really relavent to this IMO.

Well, certainly this work-requirement should be removed.  And I'm pretty sure doesn't exist in certain of the better Continental nations.  I realize Britain is far more right-wing than they.

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Rubbish. At least they have work. Mass unemployment is a great social evil; that you can't understand this just shows how out of touch with reality you are.

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No, being unemployed is better if welfare is more comfortable than the poorly paid jobs that are available in a country like the US.

[opebo]

Too rigid a labour marked and too big and unflexible companies

Exactly

You guys are silly.  Germans have a wonderful standard of living, incredible security, and their nation has the biggest current account surplus of any (I believe higher as a precent of GDP than America's corresponding current account deficit).  In other words they own more of other countrys' economies (including the US) every year.  No, it is America's economy that is the cripple, not Germany's.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, certainly this work-requirement should be removed.

Why? So lazy f***ers can abuse the system? How the hell does that help the unemployed?

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I'm fairly sure it does; actual unemployment in most of those countries is far higher than the official figures (which, IIRC, are just claimant count in some countries). Could be wrong, but I don't think so.

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No, that's not true either. I fail to see how spending a lot of time, effort and money to end mass unemployment is "right-wing".

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Rubbish. You just don't get it do you?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You guys are silly.

Thanks

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I think you'll find that the unemployed don't. As an aside, do you know quite how high unemployment is in the former East Germany? Quite scary really...

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In the end, meaningless

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Right. That's way America's economy is stuck in a rut with mass unemployment on a frightening scale and is dragging down the economies of the rest of the continent and Germany has just emerged from a recession and is growing at a fairly rapid rate, has low unemployment etc. etc.

[Democratic Hawk]

Eurosocialism? Wtf? France et al are not Socialist. They're failing social model is not Socialist. At all. Statist does NOT = Socialist.
Bah humbug. And what's all this "Europe" thing? Some European countries don't have these problems. I live in one of them.

Britain escaped these problems because of Margaret Thatcher.  Before she came along, Britain was the sick man of Europe.

And how we suffered along the way! Mass unemployment during the 1980s and early 1990s was nothing to be proud of

Dave

[opebo]

Well, certainly this work-requirement should be removed.

Why? So lazy f***ers can abuse the system? How the hell does that help the unemployed?

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Rubbish. You just don't get it do you?

No, I don't share your working-class work-ethic.  But I do understand its source.  Try to look beyond your class horizons.

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I think you'll find that the unemployed don't. As an aside, do you know quite how high unemployment is in the former East Germany? Quite scary really...

Special case - unfair to judge the German or more broadly Western European social democratic system on how well it absorbs masses of ill-adjusted people suddenly thrust upon it.

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In the end, meaningless[/quote]

Hmm.  How is it meaningless that they take in enormous amounts of money from trade?  I mean, I would like to have that money, and I'm not sure how you could think hundreds of billions of dollars are 'meaningless'.  A lot can be done with those funds.

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Right. That's way America's economy is stuck in a rut with mass unemployment on a frightening scale and is dragging down the economies of the rest of the continent and Germany has just emerged from a recession and is growing at a fairly rapid rate, has low unemployment etc. etc.

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Come visit us.. talk to the ordinary people (not the 15year old scions of the upper-middle-class you meet here).. find out how good things are in the 'Land of the Free'.