France Crushes Socialist Welfare Dream, Admits “Living Beyond Its Means” For 40 Years
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
10/09/2014
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.” We wonder how much those ‘slightly used’ guillotines are going for on eBay now?
The Rest…HERE
