comment is neither here nor there as a rsposnee to the article in the New York Times because the social welfare state had absolutely nothing to do with the current crises or with the choice of murderous austerity as a rsposnee.  The crashes England, Ireland, Spain and Portugal were caused not by excessive social spending but by overheated, under-regulated private markets that ran amok.  The problem for Italy isn\'t that its economy can\'t support the social welfare state but that the system is so riddled with corruption that they are unable to collect even a small fraction of the taxes owed.  Greece alone has overspent on pensions and so forth but here too the fact that the political system is so amazingly corrupt prevents both the collection of taxes and the modest reforms necessary to bring the expenditures into balance with potential revenues. In every case except for that of the United Kingdom, the heedless rush to adopt the Euro combined with the idiotic decision to impose austerity in the midst of a recession has turned what could have been a very minor economic downturn into a depression likely to be every bit the equal of the Great Depression.  What\'s more, the economic and social realities of the second  Gilded Age  which we are now suffering through belie your claims.  The countries with the deepest commitment to the social welfare state and the strongest regulations of private economic activity (especially banking) have suffered the least during this crisis and seem best situated to have very strong recoveries as it abates.  The American-English model of predatory capitalism has proven itself to be disastrous for the vast majority of people and ruinous for the liberal state.  Apropos of your reply to Dick Sindall, I would observe that it\'s easy for one who lives in modern France to think how much better it would be to live in a state of nature.  Yet those who currently live in places where a man possess only what he can personally defend do not seem to be particularly happy at living in a state of nature.  I suspect that nearly every Somali who isn\'t a warlord would trade places with you regardless of your place in French society.