Saturday, July 19, 2008

A World First for Denmark...yippee!

In case you weren't so economically aware as to have noticed it, Denmark is officially the first country in the world to fall into recession. The way these things are measured, that means three consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. Well, you can only inflate the currency for so long before the balloon starts to lose some air. And in Denmark's case, given that 70% of the economy is owned and run by the state, the private sector doesn't really have much room for manouevre.

Of course, this would be the time to start cutting taxes and benefits big time, thus encouraging more productivity. I very much doubt all these socialists will do it though. Expect increased taxes, although income tax won't rise, it'll be inflated property values and "environmental" taxes that take the extra cut here. There isn't much scope to increase income taxes when they're already the highest in the world at 68%. Even the stupidest Dane going (and there about 5 million of them), would see through that one.

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