Theodore Dalrymple--
On Belgium:
Belgium’s inability to form a central government would not matter so much if the country did not need to reduce its public spending. Though Belgium is the largest per-capita exporter of goods and services in the world and has healthy private savings, it also has a large and growing public debt—nearly 100 percent of GDP—and an annual budget deficit of more than 5 percent. With growth negligible and government bond yields rising in a currency (the euro) that the Belgians cannot inflate, retrenchment is essential, but the Walloons and the Flemish cannot agree on how to do it. The Walloons want higher taxes to maintain the current arrangements; the Flemish want lower taxes and reduced spending to promote long-term growth. The result is a stalemate. Wallonia and Flanders are like a married couple who no longer can live together but find divorce impossible because of difficulties over the settlement.
On Ireland:
Yet when the crisis hit and the government had to cut public-sector salaries drastically and pursue other austerity measures—friends of mine who live in Ireland have lost a fifth to a quarter of their wages—hardly a word of complaint ensued. Most people seemed to understand that the seven fat—indeed, grossly obese—years simply had to be followed by the seven lean. The relation of the previous excess to the present hardship was obvious to everyone, and the population sought no scapegoats, even if, correctly, it blamed the politicians and bankers more than it blamed itself.
The Irish did take the first opportunity to vote the government out of office; Fianna Fáil, the dominant political party since Irish independence in 1921, found itself humiliated at the polls. But in recognizing the painful fact that the guilt of others does not constitute one’s own innocence, the Irish set the world an example. Since the crash, successive Irish governments have had the determination to fight to retain their low corporate tax, called “predatory” by the other Europeans. (It is symptomatic of Europe’s sickness that refraining from government seizure of money is now deemed by its political class to be predation.) The Irish economy may thus be poised for a quicker recovery.
On Greece:
Greece was another matter. The government, also relying on euro-based good credit, borrowed simply to bolster its public sector. When this differently constructed pyramid collapsed, the population’s chief object became warding off change—ensuring, that is, that it continued to receive more than it earned and consume more than it produced. Yes, the government was corrupt; yes, foreign bankers lent irresponsibly. But did Greeks really not know that tax evasion was standard practice in their country, and by no means only among the elite; that much of the employment in the public sector was bogus make-work; that retirement conditions superior to those in Germany were unearned and unsustainable; and that their political and administrative class was composed of liars and cheats? Blaming the Germans—the Nazi stereotype emerged quickly, once European subsidies were reduced—became a convenient way to avoid self-examination.
On Germany:
For a time, the euro did seem to serve German interests, allowing countries to buy German goods that they might not otherwise have been able to buy. Meanwhile, Germany, with a determination not shown by other European countries, reduced payroll taxes and barely increased wages, having previously established a powerful manufacturing base. Savings rose, and Germany became the China of Europe. Now it has the problem of what to do with its trade surplus, larger than the trade deficits of France, Italy, and Spain combined.
On Europe:
In short, the incontinent spending of many European governments, which awarded whole populations unearned benefits at the expense of generations to come, has—along with a megalomaniacal currency union—produced a crisis not merely economic but social, political, and even civilizational. The European Union that was supposed to put an end to war on the continent has resuscitated antagonisms that might end in bellicosity, if not in outright war. And the European Project stands revealed as what any sensible person could have seen it always was: something akin to the construction of a massive, post-Tito Yugoslavia.
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