Loading ...France Crushes Socialist Welfare Dream, Admits “Living Beyond Its Means” For 40 Years
Tyler Durden’s pictureSubmitted by Tyler Durden on 10/09/2014 20:43 -0400
Facing up to the pressures of responsibility as a member of the European Union – having been told their treaty-busting budget plan was unacceptable – it seems France is resorting to the worst case scenario – cut spending! As Bloomberg reports, the glory days of France’s welfare model may be behind it, as France, which hasn’t had a balanced budget since 1974, admits “for 40 years we have lived beyond our means,” but French PM Valls is “convinced [France] can make up for lost time.” His plan – streamlining unemployment benefits, cutting bonuses for newborns, and pegging family allowances to household income (all of which amount to a de facto re-writing of France’s welfare rules), are being spun positively: “It’s not the end of a generous system,” government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said yesterday. “It’s the end of spending that wasn’t useful – and that’s in order to preserve a system that is a costly one.”