By Thomas Madison
Many European countries, Greece for example, are living, breathing examples of welfare states on steroids, where government spending/waste has led to fiscal suicide. The next domino to fall is likely France, where over 80% of college students with marketable degrees plan to take their talents and degrees abroad due to France’s excessive taxation.
Unable to learn from Greece’s example, newly elected (2012) socialist French President, Francois Hollande, is punishing businesses with higher taxation, which is further crippling the French economy, as businesses find it impossible to grow and can only look forward to even more taxation.
France boasts of one of the most generous public welfare programs in the world, which has attracted a huge number of immigrants only too happy to dine at the public trough as long as permitted.
President Sarkozy had begun a process of reducing welfare benefits, some of which have been continued by Hollande. However, it appears to be too little too late. With government spending now at over 50%, France is on track to pass Denmark in 2014. Businesses are going bankrupt as they can no longer compete with foreign companies, due to the 50% payroll “social” tax they are required to pay, which is feeding the beast that is France’s welfare system.
Immigrants from Muslim countries are attracted by France’s liberal welfare program, giving France the largest Muslim population in Europe. These immigrants do not look for work, breed like rabbits (more kids equals more welfare), and encourage their children to dine at the public trough when they are grown and on their own.
How long can the United States continue its own generous welfare program without collapsing its economy. America has been hemorrhaging millionaires for five years, who have taken their money to other countries. We have stood by and watched as many American businesses have moved offshore, taking their jobs and contribution to our GDP with them. Yet we still can’t seem to learn from the mistakes of others. We should be studying what is happening in Europe very closely and avoiding, at all cost, their fatal misakes. Instead we truck along on our own socialist road to ruin, blindly following the examples of European social and fiscal suicide. WAKE UP, AMERICA!!!!
There is a line from a poem/song I wrote in the fall of 1979 that keeps coming to mind. It’s about a trip I took cross-country. I wrote it in a hotel in Portland, Oregon:
“The telephone rings. ‘It’s time to wake up.’
Yes it is, I suppose, but wisdom is tough
And advice is so free.
In Portland.”
