We’ve written quite a bit about the awful economic conditions in France — high unemployment, bloated government sector, etc. — and Germany is not much better off. Germany has 12% unemployment, a $33 an hour wage level that makes many of its businesses uncompetitive, and many structural impediments to change. Its anemic economic growth is not going to reduce unemployment significantly, another malady it shares with France.

Moreover, the pressures from the 10 new EU members, and the low cost behemoth China, are creating further burdens on the government’s welfare system in the absence of economic restructuring. Some days the current economic situation in Old Europe suggests to us what the Great Depression might have looked like if the 1930′s had the huge welfare states of today.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 28th, 2005 at 8:52 am and is filed under business, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.