As expected, the socialist Francois Hollande has defeated Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s presidential election. Meanwhile, in Greece, and also as expected, exit polls for the country’s parliamentary elections are predicting chaos. The center-right New Democracy party has won about a fifth of the vote, with a hard-left coalition pushing the center-left Pasok into third place, while just to make things interesting, neo-Nazis have picked up around 7% of the vote and are set to enter parliament for the first time.
In short, these results represent a comprehensive rejection of the austerity-based plans to salvage the eurozone’s indebted economies, both in the impoverished south of the continent and the slightly-less-impoverished north. As I wrote two weeks ago, Hollande has pledged to renegotiate the European ‘Fiscal Compact’, which was designed to impose fiscal discipline on the continent’s governments and on which the ink is barely dry.
In Greece, the disparate parties must now to try to cobble together a coalition government. If they fail, there will be another election; if they succeed, it will be at the cost of concessions to the anti-austerity parties of the far left and right. The Greek people have so far insisted that they want to remain in the euro, while rejecting the austerity and reforms on which continued membership is conditional; something will soon have to give.
With Germany now almost alone in backing austerity as the solution to the eurozone’s problems, the break-up of the single currency – beloved of statists, social democrats (who would pass for socialists in the US) and bureaucrats – is a step closer this evening. The death throes could last for years, and will inflict great pain on millions of people. But for those who believe in small government, individual liberty and the pre-eminence of the nation state, while supporting economic co-operation between nations, there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
Europe’s high-tax, high-spending, mass immigration-fueled social democratic welfare racket wasn’t going to last forever. The eurozone project plastered over the cracks by transferring money from north to south, and the financial crisis that began in 2008 has merely brought forward the day of reckoning. It was always going to get worse before it could get better.
The tax hikes and cuts in spending that governments have imposed in a bid to keep the eurozone together have done little to tackle the underlying debt crisis, and nothing to produce the growth which is the the continent’s only hope of recovery. They’ve succeeded only in driving disillusioned electorates towards extremist parties. In Greece some of those extremists will soon be part of the government, while in France they’re waiting in the wings; Hollande relied on the support of Communist parties to defeat Sarkozy, who himself finished only narrowly ahead of the far-right National Front’s candidate in the first round of voting.
There will be all kinds of predictions in the next few days as to where Europe goes from here, but the truth is we’re in uncharted territory now. All we know for sure is that things are about to get interesting.
VIVA LA FRANCE! LET’S PUNISH THE RICH LIKE HERBERT HOOVER!
The French people who in the 18th century gave us history’s first egalitarian revolution that butchered hundreds and thousands of innocent people and sent the country into utter turmoil and ruin replaced Nicolas Sarkozy with Francois Hollande a big spending tax-the-rich-to death socialist liberal who has vowed to punish the nation’s greedy rich with massive tax hikes to pay for new government stimulus programs to revive the sagging French economy.
In other words, instead of keeping in place Sarkozy’s austerity measures on runaway government spending and debt Hollande is going to punish France’s employers, producers and investors to pay their fair share-much like Herbert Hoover did in 1932 when he said “the trouble with capitalism is capitalists” and signed into law a punitive millionaires fairness tax that raised top marginal rates from 25% to 52% and sent the unemployment rate soaring to an all time US high of 25% the following year. Viva La France! Socialism is in a death spiral in Europe and the election of Hollande will hasten its end along with the European Union.
Google ApolloSpeaks at Townhall.com to read the rest of this widely linked piece.
The tax rate on a car in Denmark is 100-180%, the tax rate on the top 1% in Norway is 80%, the Swedish, Finlish,
Netherlands and even the German economy are all considered ‘high tax’ economies and yet Denmark and Norway are consistently rated the happiest peoples on the planet, as well as having personal debt loads lower than the US, Canada, and Britain The country with the greatest growth economy is Germany. The country rated as having the most balanced economy in the world is Finland, as well as being one of the best counties to be a woman (last I looked, The US was in the bottom 10 of the OECD). The Netherlands, despite efforts from there Right to sabotage cooperative government, rivals Germany in terms of the soundness of its economy. Death spiral of social democratic governments in Europe? I think not. My wager is on the German economy and the Northern europeans generally, to be enjoying relative prosperity while the US lurches from recession to recession.