Maastricht Treaty revisions needed?

[--Pete]

Hi,

Fine and good. But if the people of Denmark woke up tomorrow with a government that abandoned all its social functions, and devolved to the least possible activity at the lowest level, it would also be unreasonable to expect wages to remain as high as they are. They would drop dramatically in response to the sudden withdrawal of services. Now, how much that would be compensated for by lower prices and lower taxes is an open question. Maybe the trade-off would be worth it, maybe it wouldn't. But you certainly can't just look at current wages as a reliable guide, then mentally subtract the tax income. It doesn't work that way.

Whoa! A sudden, overnight change like that would indeed destroy the economy, if not the nation. That's not evolution, that's a big meteor smacking down. But that's not the issue. The comparison would have to be between two similar (OK, this is all hypothetical, so make that 'identical') countries, one of which is like Denmark, the other (call it Dendollar) has all the same services but they are supplied for a price by private companies. I don't see why the source of the infrastructure would have an effect on wages as long as the infrastructure is there.

The problem with Dendollar isn't that the services are not available, it's that they are not available to everyone. That may or may not really matter in an absolute sense. It is a social issue. The government overhead is the price society pays for being 'nice'.

--Pete