Cracks in Europe's social model

Columnist Martin Wolf suggests the failings of Europe's current welfare state outweigh the benefits. "The time has come for Europeans to ask themselves the unthinkable: can their vaunted social model endure? ... The European state is maternal: protective but also infantilising. Its high taxes and benefits discourage anybody from doing too well, while ensuring that nobody does badly. Its services are available to all, but are also mediocre and inflexible ...For all its much discussed inefficiencies, the trial and error of the market economy proved more effective, because it was more creative and flexible, than Soviet planning. While a far smaller error, European social democracy looks increasingly unworkable in the long run."

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