Workers in France are striking at fuel terminals and marching in the streets to fight against "pension reforms" that would increase the minimum retirement age from 60 t0 62 along with other blows directed against the working class. Although the number of workers in French trade unions is very low (significantly lower than in the U.S.) polls show that a large majority of French people, 71%, support the strikes, which they understand is essentially a defense of the larger social welfare state, which includes and protects all citizens.
In Britain the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat "coalition" government has come forward with the most draconian cuts in public service and social welfare rights since the development of the British welfare state by the postwar Labor government. Half a million public workers will be dismissed, fees for education and other social services will be sharply increased, the retirement age for pensions will be increased to 66 and other assualts on the peoples living standards in the name of "fiscal responsibility."
What is happening in these and other European countries is a back to the future policy of pre 1930s, "fiscal conservativism," budget cuts, spending cuts, layoffs in order to revive the business cycle--away from Keynesian spending policies, both liberal and centrist, away even from the conservative monetary manipulations which were used as a "substitute" for Keynesian policies after 1979 in the U.S and many countries
Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stieglitz has spoken eloquently against these policies in a news interview ith the British newspaper, The Guardian. "Austerity," he states, "converts recessions into depressions....contending that these policies result in lower demand, lower growth, lower tax revenues, the waste of the unemployed and often higher deficits--in essence a race to the bottom."
The Obama administration has so far opposed such policies, but at the state level, they are being advanced, often in a demagogic way, by Republican government such as the Christie administration in New Jersey and by the national Republican party.
The U.S. national debt is in percentage terms not that far behind the British debt and international capital through the IMF and World bank has clamored for the kinds of policies that are now being carried forward in Britiain for the U.S.
The method in the "tea party" rightwing Republican madness leads in that direction--that is, a tax policy that sustains tax benefits for corporations and the rich and sharply decreases even existing social security, public education, health care benefits for the general population. An austerity of the kind the great majority of Americans have not experienced since the early years of the Great Depression.
This is why the Republican right must be stopped in these elections. Even through American workers don't have the welfare state of the European counterparts, the rights they have will face what British workers are now facing at the state and national level if the Republicans win.
