Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Entitlement

  • Macron Should Go Ahead with Pension Reforms

    Emmanuel Macron
    French president Emmanuel Macron chairs a meeting in the Elysée Palace in Paris, August 27, 2020 (Elysée/Philippe Servent)

    Emmanuel Macron is reportedly mulling pension reforms that were put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    There are risks: reforms will almost certainly spark protests, including from trade unions, which oppose raising the retirement age. Macron can ill afford social unrest a year away from the election.

    But it could also burnish the French president’s reformist credentials after the COVID-19 crisis forced him into a more managerial role.

    Macron is expected to unveil his plans when he addresses the nation ahead of Bastille Day on July 14. The fact that it has leaked he may bring back reforms suggests he is testing the waters. So let me add my arguments to the discussion.

    I’ll take the political first before covering the — more important — substantive arguments. (more…)

  • French Unions Put Their Own Interests Ahead of Workers’

    Paris France demonstration
    French workers demonstrate against proposed pension reforms in Paris, December 17, 2019 (PS/Mathieu Delmestre)

    French metro and railway workers have been on strike for almost a month to preserve privileges from an era when the trains ran on coal.

    The people who suffer the most are workers on modest incomes who don’t own a car and normally commute into Paris by train; small businesses and shops which are understaffed; families that couldn’t get together for Christmas.

    The unions behind the strikes claim they are fighting a “president of the rich” — Emmanuel Macron — on behalf of “the people”.

    They aren’t. Trade unions are trying to preserve retirement rules that benefit their workers at the expense of everyone else. (more…)

  • Macron’s Pension Reforms Are Eminently Reasonable

    Paolo Gentiloni Emmanuel Macron
    Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni is received by French president Emmanuel Macron in the Elysée Palace in Paris, September 27, 2017 (Elysée)

    Having liberalized labor law to make it easier for companies to hire, reined in labor migration from Eastern Europe to protect low-skilled workers in France and shaken up intercity bus service and the state-owned railway company, President Emmanuel Macron — just fighting his way back from the reactionary Yellow Vests protests — is taking on a reform of France’s sprawling pension system.

    You can’t accuse the man of not trying. (more…)

  • British Health Service Politically Sensitive for Conservatives

    For anyone who watched the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the pride Britain takes in its National Health Service (NHS) is clear. Far from the apathy that most Americans feel toward government-provided services, the NHS has been a popular feature of British life since it emerged during the late 1940s as part of the Labour Party’s postwar government. That makes the debate about how to prepare the system for an expected rise in demand at a time of austerity politically sensitive.

    The NHS is a public health provider that offers treatment “free at the point of use” and gets the majority of its operating income from taxes. But like health-care providers across the developed world, the organization is coping with strain as it balances Britain’s aging population against the country’s generally lower economic activity and rising health-care costs.

    The Conservative Party-led coalition government has tried to improve the situation by privatizing an array of NHS services, creating a hybrid model in which most of the services that patients interact with are government-provided but many of the auxiliary services no longer are.

    This has generally not been received well. The breakdowns in service provision directly attributable to this health-care delivery method have been documented in a number of recent studies. Polls show voters trust the opposition Labour Party more to improve the NHS than they do the Conservatives. This is not in itself new but alarming to Conservative Party strategists nonetheless. In response, George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, announced a £2 billion funding increase for the NHS last week. (more…)

  • Will the Looted Just Shrug?

    The statist reaction to Republican senator Jim Bunning’s temporary block of a welfare bill shows what the welfare state has done to the American people.

    Everyone knows that federal spending is out of control. The feds are spending $1.4 trillion more than what they’re collecting in taxes. And that’s just for this year.

    Where are they getting the difference? They’re borrowing it, adding to the massive and ever-growing debt of the federal government. How is that debt going to be paid off? By American taxpayers. Your individual, average share as of right now is about $40,000. It’s growing every day because the feds are running up your credit card, which has no limit.

    So, Bunning blocks a welfare bill on the ground that the federal government shouldn’t be borrowing any more money. If it can’t afford to be providing the welfare, Bunning said, then it shouldn’t be spending more money.

    The statist crowd went ballistic. The attacks were the standard ones whenever anyone objects to any welfare state scheme: “He’s selfish, self-centered, and greedy. He hates the poor and loves the rich. He’s just grandstanding. The bill is only a small percentage of total spending and so it doesn’t make any difference in the larger scheme of things.”

    But the statist reaction to Bunning’s move goes much deeper than that and is a perfect reflection of what the socialistic welfare state has done to the American people. Having been born and raised under the welfare state, American recipients of welfare largess, including those on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, education grants, mortgage guarantees, and bailout and stimulus monies, honestly believe that they are entitled to continue receiving it for as long as they “need” the money.

    That’s why they call much of this junk an “entitlement.” What the entitlement crowd is saying is: “I am entitled to your money because I want it and I need it. If you object, my statist associates and I will go on the attack against you and expose you for being a vicious, no-good, selfish hater of the poor and lover of the rich.”

    This is what the welfare state has done to America. It has produced a real war among the American people — between those who produce and own their wealth and those who are trying to get their hands on other people’s money through the force of the state. The nineteenth century French legislator Frederic Bastiat put it well when he indicated that under the welfare state, the government becomes a great fiction by which some people try to live at the expense of other people.

    Almost as bad has been what the welfare state has done to the mindsets of the American people. It has made so many Americans dependent on the government, not just financially but also emotionally and psychologically. People are on the dole have convinced themselves that they could never survive without their dole. And they absolutely freak out whenever someone talks about ending their dole. Even worse, they look upon the government as their daddy or, even worse, as a beloved deity.

    What is happening, not only here in the United States but in Greece, Portugal, Spain, England, and other welfare state countries, is that there isn’t enough wealth among the taxpayers to plunder to fund the massive, ever-growing number of people on the dole.

    Meanwhile, panicky over the potential crack up of the welfare state, liberals are blaming the economic woes on “freedom, deregulation, greed, the bankers, and free enterprise,” and they’re proposing their standard statist solution — more socialism and Keynesianism. They’re saying that the feds should just keep spending, spending, and spending, no matter how much they have to borrow or inflate to do so. The notion is that more spending will put unemployed people back to work, whose taxes can then fund the voracious and ever-growing wants of the parasitic sector of society.

    But as we libertarians have been saying for decades, ultimately the welfare state house of cards is going to crack apart, just as it did in Cuba and the Soviet Union. God has created a consistent universe, one in which immoral means will beget bad ends. The crack up has obviously already begun in such heavy-duty welfare state countries as Greece, Portugal, Spain, and England, where the base of wealth to plunder and loot is more limited than it is in the United States.

    But even here in the United States there is a limit to how much socialism the private sector can bear. And don’t forget: there is always the possibility that those who are being plundered and looted might just decide to go on strike, refusing to produce any more wealth and just “shrugging.”

    This story first appeared on Hornberger’s Blog, The Future of Freedom Foundation, March 4, 2010.