Ninety-three percent of Italians believe cutting the country’s hobbling public debt is a top priority, but few are willing to make personal sacrifices to do so, according to an AP-GfK poll released Tuesday.
Only about a quarter of Italians favor reforming labor laws to make it easier to fire workers, or raising the retirement age from 65 (and sometimes lower) to 67 – two of the reforms considered critical to curb Italy’s public spending and boost economic growth.
No pain, no gain.
I first came across the phrase ‘entitlement culture’ in this blog. It came from North American critiques of Europe and I dismissed it as sour grapes with the thought that you guys aren’t doing that well either. Events – chiefly in Greece – have made me think again, plus looking around me in London. You don’t have to be a neocon to think that somewhere along the line the welfare state got out of kilter with reality. The sight of homeless people in such vast numbers in the US makes me want to add the rider that the welfare state might be too minimalistic in the US. The conundrum: can you have a safety net that does not create dependency and lowered expectations? I notice recent reports that even China is contemplating how to provide for its aging population with some kind of social welfare.
Everyone is in favor of austerity, until you get down to defining what austerity means.
Terry Tee,
I think you make some very good points. There is no perfect balance between too much and too little social safety net. It is something of a gray area. Only the most radical right-wingers are arguing for the complete dismantling of all government programs. The problem is those are the people who tend to come out and vote in primaries. Thus the current field of GOP would-be presidents are in general the most conservative (reactionary in some respects) since the 1920’s. Couple that with the decided lack of gravitas among them (Huntsman is a possible exception but he is also the lone moderate with zero chance of winning) and I am not sanguine about the chances of removing Obama from office in 2012. Most of these men and one woman have staked out positions in order to curry the favor of the far right, that will come back to haunt the eventual nominee in the general election.