From: "Randy" 

By those standards, Japan will be in worse shape in the next 50 years.

"Gary Britt"  wrote in message
news:42ca9db5{at}w3.nls.net...
>  Recently, Tony Blair said the following:  I guess Blair hasn't talked to
> Adam or he'd know how great the EU economic engine was really doing!!!
> 
>
>  "Some have suggested I want to abandon Europe's social
model," Blair told
> the European Parliament last month. "But tell me: what type of social
> model
> is it that has 20 million unemployed in Europe, productivity rates falling
> behind those of the United States; that is allowing more science graduates
> to be produced by India than by Europe; and that, on any relative index of
> a
> modern economy -- skills, R&D, patents, IT -- is going down not up."
>  Without radical reform, the future does indeed look bleak for Europe's
> social model. India will expand its biotechnology sector fivefold over the
> next five years, China has trebled its spending on research and
> development
> in the last five, while of the top 20 universities in the world today,
> only
> two are now in Europe, Blair noted in his Strasbourg speech.
>
>  Then there is old Europe's demographic time-bomb. The ratio of those in
> retirement compared to those at work is expected to double from 24 percent
> today to 50 percent in 2050. This will not only lead to even lower growth
> rates -- a full percentage point a year according to the European
> Commission -- but significantly higher spending on pensions and
> healthcare.
>
>  Standing side by side with Blair Friday, European Commission President
> Jose Manuel Barroso bluntly reminded legislators that "to have an
> ambitious
> social model we need growth."
>
>

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