In editorial on the major increase in German unemployment, at its worst since World War II, Spanish newspaper El Pais pointed out that “Germany today needs to adopt policies to stimulate the economy; precisely the opposite of [the state’s] anorexic spending and investment diets.”

Do we really believe the State should be in charge of managing the private economy? How does it make sense to create an artificial productive system in which the government produces goods the community does not value? We had a similar system in the 1970s and it gave us what we had fought to avoid: more unemployment and socialism, less freedom and self-sufficiency.The German State is far from following “anorexic diets.” Its problem is being too interventionist: a system of discriminatory workers’ rights complicating young people’s attempts to enter the workforce and creating a rigid labor market where finding a job is like getting stuck in knee-deep mud, nobody moves; a market full of State favors (subsidies, pork for lobby groups…); tax confiscation that penalizes private businesses and, therefore, jobs; State monopolies that block competition; labor laws that discourage production and reduce the entire community to parasitic dependency on the State.     

So then, what role does the State play in economic welfare? None. It shouldn’t invent “diets” of any kind. It should trash all the socialist laws that penalize work. It should remove business and union privileges. It should eliminate taxes on consumption, investment and saving. The more money and responsibility we give the State, the less money and freedom we give ourselves: for years, the “welfare state” has shown itself a failure. The faster we get rid of it the better

The only real solution to the dark future of massive unemployment looming over us is total economic freedom. The path to reaching this goal is reinstating laissez-faire.