Commentary
France and Britain have both built welfare systems that may have begun life as humane responses to social need, but have since ossified into fiscal traps. Nowhere is this clearer than in pensions. In France, retirees enjoy not only earlier retirement than their European peers but also far larger state transfers, a problem that has been brewing since the end of the Second World War. In Britain, this problem goes back even further, with a system that predates even the legacy of the National Health Service, grown from roots in the Liberal reforms of the 1910s.
