Last week, Nicolas Sarkozy became the eleventh in a succession of officeholders to go down in defeat in recent elections, deposed by the fleshy, almost anonymous Francois Hollande. The fact that their new president was a socialist didn't seem to matter to the French electorate; his promise to reverse Sarkozy's policy to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, however, did.
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| Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall... |
So the French deemed it okay to live under a regime that will continue to mortgage its future, just don't touch those generous entitlements. If it bankrupts the next generation, who cares? Someone else's problem.
It's much the same in Greece where the a 3-year austerity stint will come to an end as the sitting government gets swept aside by the Communist party and others on the far left. The citizenry has decided that the good times don't need to end, just elect someone who can "make jobs" and if that can't be done, make sure those with jobs will be forced to look after those without.
The greatest experiments in multiplying wealth by dividing it have all failed miserably. Some have taken decades to do so, but fail they did. There is no reason to expect different results in Europe this time around.
