You can’t vote for prosperity

Across Europe, people are voting to dump austerity for 'growth'. But you can’t just vote for prosperity, you have to make it, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Until recently life was pretty good in most of Europe. Europeans have had, as Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research puts it, "the best governments money can buy". Their leaders "have provided them with all sorts of wonderful social benefits".

Many have been employed by their governments to provide those benefits to others those who can't find jobs they want or those who are retired (rather earlier than people elsewhere). The problem is that the good life is expensive. While income taxes are high in Europe by the standards of everywhere else, they still haven't brought in anywhere near enough to pay the bills (partly because the bills are too high and partly because of widespread tax evasion).

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.