LONDON, INTERNATIONAL POLICY NETWORK — The strikes in Greece against the government's austerity package must worry the leaders of any country running big budget deficits — which is most countries, including Japan. After all, the package was not particularly austere: minor trimming of Greece's notoriously bloated and corrupt public sector, a nudge upward of the pension age to 67, but not enough to redeem Greece anytime soon.
The good news is that governments can, however, cut budgets without civil unrest and without losing anything that voters really value. But — as Canada showed — it can only be done through a reform strategy, not a cuts strategy.
Huge rises in taxation in the United States and Europe in the last decade bought plenty of intrusive new agencies, more expensive doctors and teachers, and superlative pay and pensions for growing number of bureaucrats. But taxpayers don't believe they have bought better services. And entrepreneurs complain that the rise in regulation and bureaucracy prevents them from generating the economic growth needed to save faltering economies.