Gloating

WSJ: Europe’s Welfare State Reckoning

It was only a matter of time before the Wall Street Journal ran a darkly giddy editorial declaring ideological victory in the midst of the Eurocrisis. Today, the Bible of fiscal conservatism indulges that instinct, declaring that in Europe “the reckoning has arrived.” From Greece to Italy to France, the cause of the region’s woes isn’t the Euro, it’s the unsustainable welfare state that relies on ever-increasing taxes and debt without population and economic growth to make up for it. “The lesson of Italy, and most of the rest of Europe,” the editors write, “is never become a high-tax, slow-growth entitlement state, because the inevitable reckoning is nasty, brutish and not short.”