Norwegians enjoy universal health care, subsidized public universities that are almost free to attend and a generous social security system.
The government was forced to borrow heavily from abroad to finance foreign trade (i.e., importing of foreign goods) and to sustain its generous social welfare system.
He also faces difficult choices on how to tackle labour reform, competitiveness, resurrect moribund industry and protect France's generous social welfare system.
The work, published today, shows countries that provide a generous social security system have low levels of injecting drug use, irrespective of how punitive the drugs policy is.
In his book, excerpts of which have been published in the past week in the mass circulation daily newspaper Bild, Mr. Sarrazin accused Turkish immigrants of taking advantage of Germany's generous social welfare system.
Since November, when she took office for the second time, her new center-right coalition has spent much of its time squabbling over nuclear energy, tax reform and whether or not to overhaul the generous social welfare system.
Bertie Ahern's successive governments from 1997 onwards also spent wildly, creating the most generous social welfare system in Europe, an expansive public sector and pay levels in the public services that vastly outweighed those of other EU nations.
But whatever the details, we will need to adopt a much more generous social insurance system to allow us to deal with the turbulent work environment if we are to avoid disruption on a scale that will simply overwhelm our political systems.
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday unveiled a major austerity package aimed at finding savings of more than €85 billion by 2014, but it was immediately criticized by the opposition and trade unions, which pledged that they would unite to fight cutbacks they claimed would undermine the country's generous social welfare system.
