Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Compare and Contrast

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The news out of old Europe has not been good if you are one who supports the nanny-state form of government.

This is a great example of just how bad things are:

BERLIN -- Germany's jobless rate edged down to 11.6 percent in May, government figures showed Tuesday, but the drop reflected a seasonal upturn instead of economic improvement in Europe's biggest economy.

The unadjusted jobless rate in May was down from 12 percent the previous month. The number of people without a job in Germany dropped to 4.807 million from 4.968 million.

In the US, the jobless rate is steady at 5.2%.

The reasons for this are evident, a strong work ethic that was a part of the German culture has been destroyed by the unemployment insurance available to displaced workers. They receive enormous checks when they aren't working and that just enables the worker to stay at home.
This is a major issue for Europe (and by extension the EU) as a whole and Germany in particular.

2 comments:

Paste said...

Here in the UK, unemployment, based on the ILO definition from the Labour Force Survey, showed a rate of 4.7 per cent for the three-month period, January to March 2005, down 0.1 percentage point from the previous quarter. The level stood at 1,396,000, a fall of 15,000 over the quarter.

The claimant count measure of unemployment rose by 8,100 in April 2005 to stand at 839,400 (a rate of 2.7 per cent).

There's more to europe than just Germany?

Scott said...

Point taken. I was more talking about the continent, particularly the western portion comprising France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Italy to a smaller extent.

The UK and Ireland seem to have bucked the trend as they are more in tune with the American and Japanese model of business.

I for one don't include the UK and Ireland as old Europe.