France

France like the US runs a budget deficit and they are taking steps to correct the situation. France spends 15% of its budget on social security and wants to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The people are protesting. As a comparison the US spends 52% of its budget on social security and several years ago raised the retirement age from 65 to 67. In France social security includes healthcare so if we add in Medicare to the US social security that brings the total to 72% which is almost five times more than what France spends. The problem in France is the same throughout Europe in that they have to many older people and too few workers. In 1960 they had 4 people contributing to social security for each retiree but today that figure is 1.7. Add to that the fact that it is the young working people who are also the consumers and less consumption means a slow down in economic growth. It takes 20 years for population growth to catch up but France has a birthrate of 1.8 births per woman and it takes 2.1 to stay even so France will not catch up and in fact they will get further behind. There are two ways out of this dilemma, innovation or immigration. Unlike the United States the large Muslim immigrant population is not assimilating making immigration a problem.