Do you see a pattern between countries’ social spending and their current borrowing costs?
I don’t, nor does Matthew O’Brien.*
*Although O’Brien also repeats the shibboleth, adored by mainstream economists everywhere, that the euro crisis is caused by “uncompetitive wages.” Why don’t mainstream economists ever refer to uncompetitive profits?
I would guess the relationship for these countries would be far clearer if social spending was replaced on the vertical axis by “dept per gdp”, which is of course only loosely related to social spending.