Yes, the good ol USA is on the trash heap, isn't it? (yawn)
America is finished and the Washington Post is elated.
Yep, once again the WAPOO (oh, excuse me for adding the extra O) proves that Europe is better than America.
I wonder when they’re all moving to Fraannhce?
Fine by me that Europe’s strong, the US does so much better with competition.
The author, Steven Hill, is a liberal Democrat.
You can check out some of his columns at the link below:
http://www.newamerica.net/people/steven_hill
“may be surprised to learn how our estranged transatlantic partner has been faring during these roller-coaster times “
I guess those collapses of german and british banks recently was just a mirage. A figment of my imagination.
1. They are interested in providing detailed unbiased reports with the goal of informing the knowledge of U.S. citizens
2. They have no political favorites honest
3. They never suppress information that could provide a more balanced view of their ideological opponents
4. They care about our troops, or specifically care if our troops die as a result of information they publish
5. They would rather see our nation's well being protected, than see a Republican president's policies proven wrong
6. They want the United States to continue to exist in it's present form / and would hate to see a Marxist collectivist system replace what we have
The guy does make some very salient points.
First, Europe is an attractive investment for a number of reasons, the least of which isn’t the fact that their rates of corporate taxation are far less than what we have in the US, which are some of the most stifling in the world. (*ahem* Mitt Romney is the only one talking about it *cough*)
Second, their workforce is on the whole more educated and producing more professionals to drive their economies. We don’t produce enough engineers, for instance, to drive our economy, and we’re depending on bringing in foreign workers to drive the engine.
Part of the reason that the European economy has been able to keep abreast with the US’ is our trade deficit, which has sent the dollar downward. I guess that’s good for Boeing, but not a fabulous trend, frankly.
There is some absolute nonsense in it, though. Take this quotation:
>>> “Europe doesn’t so much have a welfare society as a comprehensive system of institutions geared toward keeping everyone healthy and working.” <<<
That statement is absolute trash. Europeans call in sick FAR more than Americans do. Scandinavians are the absolute worst. Freaking slugs at times. The average Swede takes 32 days of sick leave per year. The average Norwegian takes a comparable number of days.
Of course, part of this has to do with a higher percentage of smokers in Europe. But the numbers are pretty ridiculous:
>>>On an average day, about 25 percent of Norway’s workers are absent from work, either because they have called in sick, are undergoing rehabilitation or are on long-term disability. The rate is especially high among government employees, who account for half the work force.
The average amount of time people were absent from work in Norway in 2002, not including vacations, was 4.8 weeks. Sweden, its closest competitor, totaled 4.2 weeks, while Italy came in at 1.8 weeks and Portugal at 1.5 weeks, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. <<<
There’s a reason that output per capita in Europe is only about 68% of what it is in the US.
As a socialist (read the article, it’s clear), the author is naturally trying to spin the socialist welfare states of old Europe as thriving success stories rather than the depressed mediocrities that in reality they are.
And, of course, the United States is no good at all.
In one article (there’s a link in post #7 above; scroll down to a list of the author’s columns) Hill even laments the election of “conservative” Sarkozy in France.
Most the world’s substantial economic growth isn’t in Europe at all today. It’s in Asia. Parts of Europe will grow rapidly, like Poland, but other parts have been and remain stagnant. Their problems are structural in nature, and are not being dealt with neither fiscally or with social reforms. There is complacency with the status quo, and the high unemployment, low growth rates; modest gains in productivity etc. are no new phenomena to a nation like Germany which has been in this lingering stagnating rut for over a DECADE. (For example: http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,498041,00.gif – not a good source but something I could find in a quick search)
In fact, the only thing that even drove their economy to this modest upward trend is a booming economy in the US, S. Korea, Japan, and Australia, where demand for German import products are high. God help them if this export bubble busts because their internal market is as broke as ever.
Let's think about this: as the German economy plummets and the French are not to far behind, the rest of the world hardly even takes notice anymore and keeps moving up. What does that tell you about their relative importance on the world stage economically?
LLS
Journalism 101:
When you are writing an article challenging a set of myths, don't start your article by promoting other myths.
Europe will become dhimmis to an ever-growing Muslim population much more quickly than they care to acknowledge.
Economy's doing great over there, eh? How are those "disgruntled youths" coming along with the annual rioting and car-burning, France?
You can't outrun demographics.
The article is pretty useful.
Many aspects of the Western European socioeconomic settlement are constructive for business.
The education system and employment are far better aligned, socialized medicine (with all its flaws) is a boon to employers big and small alike, and the well-modulated forms of protectionism are generally beneficial as well.
The system of vacation, sick days, leaves, layoff protections and limits on overtime which strike Americans as ridiculous is actually quite easy to manage — you simply have to bulk out your workforce to guarantee full staffing, and use short-term contracts to overcome the most burdensome layoff protections for unproven workers. (Because the state provides health care, an employer doesn’t need to fear adding headcount the way a U.S. employer does with all of the fixed costs of each new employee).
The welfare leach contingent in Europe — those who simply don’t work — isn’t much worse than the U.S., when you count all the various forms of welfare in the U.S., including a large portion of the permanent disability caseload. The European welfare set get a slightly better subsidy, but not much. The people who are definitely a lot better off are the low end of the working class, who get their health-care and vacations guaranteed, unlike unskilled American workers, who get no paid vacations or health care, but can’t afford to finance them on their own, either.
All of this is paid for by the consumer in the form of higher taxes and higher prices for goods and services, less than fully offset by higher wages (compared to the US). Basically, business gets to free ride on the consumer.
A great injustice you say? Well, not so fast. Unlike the US or Canada, almost no “rights” of the public are imposed by judges. They can be thrown off quite quickly if and when the people take a different view of their tax and price burden. Yet political movements to do anything more than tinker with the fringes of this system are virtually non-existent. The political mass of Europe has chosen the comfort of their current system, with all of its constraints, against the greater rewards (and, yes, greater risks) of the American system.
The deep problem, of course, anticipated by few people, is that Europeans reacted to higher costs and higher taxes not by reducing their lifestyles but by reducing their families. It is the one-child family which will spell the destruction of the Europe economic settlement as it now stands, not any distress to business. And that destruction begins sooner than anyone expects. The leading wave of the American baby boom hits early retirement next year, whereas the European post-war generation is already half-retired, and the ratios of 1 retiree to 1 active worker are going to be hit ridiculously soon in some European countries.
