Posted on 04/09/2010 3:59:24 AM PDT by Kaslin
By now you may have heard: America is on its way to becoming another European country.
Now, by that I do not mean that we're moving our tectonic plate off the coast of France or anything. But rather, that a century-long dream of American progressives is finally looking like it might become a reality. The recently passed health-care legislation is the cornerstone of the Europeanization of America. And to pay for it, the White House is now floating the idea of imposing a value-added tax (VAT) like they have throughout most of Europe.
In the egghead-o-sphere there's been an ongoing debate about whether America should become more like Europe. The battle lines are split along almost perfect left-right lines ideologically. Liberals like the European welfare states, unionized workforces (in and out of government), generous benefits, long vacations, etc. Conservatives like America's economic growth, its dynamism and innovation.
From what I can tell, everyone agrees that you can't have Europeanization without European-size governments. Hence, America's government outlays (pre-Obama) have tended to hover around 20 percent of GDP (the average of the last 50 years), while Europe's are often more than twice that. In France, government outlays are nearly 55 percent of GDP. In 2009, the bailout and Obama budget sent America's government outlay to 28 percent of GDP, but that should decline a bit over the next decade, unless Democrats have something else in mind.
To be fair, liberals insist conservatives are wrong to think that Europeanizing America will necessarily come at any significant cost. New York Times columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman says that in exchange for only a tiny bit less growth, Europeans buy a whole lot of security and comfort. Economists such as Stanford's Michael Boskin say Europeans have a standard of living about 30 percent lower than ours and are stagnating. Others note that the structural unemployment rate in Europe, particularly for young people (it's over 20 percent in many countries), is socially devastating.
Obviously, I'm in the conservative camp. But I think the debate misses something. We can't become Europe unless someone else is willing to become America.
Look at it this way. My 7 year-old daughter has a great lifestyle. She has all of her clothes and food bought for her. She goes on great vacations. She has plenty of leisure time. A day doesn't go by where I don't look at her and feel envious at how good she's got it compared to me. But here's the problem: If I decide to live like her, who's going to take my place?
Europe is a free-rider. It can only afford to be Europe because we can afford to be America.
The most obvious and most cited illustration of this fact is national defense. Europe's defense budgets have been miniscule because Europeans can count on Uncle Sam to protect them. Britain, which has the most credible military in NATO after ours, has funded its butter account with its gun account. As Mark Steyn recently noted in National Review, from 1951 to 1997 the share of British government expenditure on defense fell from 24 percent to 7 percent, while the share on health and welfare increased from 22 percent to 53 percent. And that was before New Labor started rolling back Thatcherism. If America Europeanizes, who's going to protect Europe? Who's going to keep the sea lanes open? Who's going to contain Iran? China? OK, maybe. But then who's going to contain China?
But that's not the only way in which Europeans are free-riders. America invents a lot of stuff. When was the last time you used a Portuguese electronic device? How often does Europe come out with a breakthrough drug? Not often, and when they do, it's usually because companies like Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline increasingly conduct their research here. Indeed, the top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single country combined. We nearly monopolize the Nobel Prize in medicine, and we create stuff at a rate Europe hasn't seen since da Vinci was in his workshop.
If America truly Europeanized, where would the innovations come from?
Europhiles hate this sort of talk. They say there's no reason to expect America to lose its edge just because we have a more "compassionate" government. Americans are an innovative, economically driven people. That's true. But so were the Europeans -- once. Then they adopted the policies they have today and that liberals want us to have tomorrow.
All Socialism's can only exist when there is a healthy Capitalism nearby to feed off of. When the host becomes too sick and injured, or the host itself becomes a Socialism, they all fail rapidly.
Socialism cannot sustain itself. They eventually kill productivity and the entrepreneurial spirit.
Righto. The socialist Locusts are bleeding us dry. Wonder how long it will take?
I used to wonder and think about “what if’s” when I would read disaster/catastrophe/WWIII novels when I was younger. I just never thought I would be living in the prologue to one.
But there is an impulse which drives leftists in America and it goes much deeper than a misplaced urge to ape Europeans. The impulse, which of course European leftists also share, is a drive for power, for control, ultimately a very unattractive and unhealthy drive to play God.
This impulse is an appetite which cannot be satiated and as and when America arrives at a completed European model, the drive to control will go on and on.
“Europe is a free-rider. It can only afford to be Europe because we can afford to be America.
“
There you have it!
Not very ......
LLS
-Barack Hussein Obama
We’re not in danger of becoming a European country. We are in danger of becoming a Third World country - and for that matter, Europe is in danger of becoming a collection of Third World countries.
The stupid liberals will blame all non-secular dissidents for the coming planetary economic collapse. Then they will do what Hitler did to stop the depression: exterminate the scapegoats. “Compassionately”, of course.
If America, the strong, prosperous, generous humanitarian/cultural safe haven for the rest of the world, devolves into a European style, amorphous, unstable and vulnerable ‘nation’… the rest of the world must look to their OWN safety and security.
Many countries in fact owe their ‘birth’ AND their continued existence, to the direct, concrete and ongoing assistance of the U.S-provided almost, on demand. That this historically demonstrable situation is neither acknowledged nor appreciated by recipients of US largesse does not diminish the empirically actual fact that it IS SO.
I’ll love our pulling the plug on these parisites, because that is what (after, in some cases decades) they have become and in spite of all the assistance and guidance of the U.S.
Many of these countries have become like spoiled children who play divorcing parents off each other and are more demanding and ungratefull all the time. These countries shake us down with the thinly disguised threat that they will favor our enemies, if we don’t give aid to them.
Fine… sell yourselves (because that is what you are doing, ANYWAY) to our enemies… THOSE guys will brutalize and oppress you, conscript your sons, outlaw YOUR faith, dismantle your society, plunder your resources, draw the enmity of your neighbors upon you, reduce you and yours to the status of paupers in YOUR OWN country…etc.!!!
Do you see any logic in this?
Awesome! I was just formulating such a response, in my head, to my liberal family members who will ask “whats wrong with being more European?”. My answer is, Europe only works becase America is American! Goldberg of course says it better..
“THOSE guys will brutalize and oppress you, conscript your sons, outlaw YOUR faith, dismantle your society, plunder your resources, draw the enmity of your neighbors upon you, reduce you and yours to the status of paupers in YOUR OWN country…etc.!!!”
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This is ultimately what will happen under a socialist government. More power is never enough and the end result is oppression.
If you want to see spoiled, decadent children on parade I recommend the documentary called “Friends of Kim.” You can watch it in eight parts on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C76HqPaA6kw
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Description:
North Korea is the country many love to hate. Declared as a nation on the axis of evil by George W. Bush but embraced by an international delegation of friends: the Korean Friendship Association.They set out for a march through North Korea. Its aim: to show solidarity with the regime and the North Korean people. The authorities even allowed some US citizens in and an American journalist from ABC.
This ‘International March for Korea’s Peace and Reunification’ is organised by the KFA, the Korean Friendship Association; a worldwide group of supporters of North Korea. Its leader is a 29 year old Spanish citizen, Alejandro Cao de Benos de Les y Perez. Originating from an aristocratic family he heads an organization with mainly young members who are fed up with the consumerism of the Western world.
In 12 days the 22 participants of the march travel through a country full of monuments, propaganda and poverty. Friends of Kim is a film about idealism, trust and crime. What begins as a magical mystery tour ends in a road to claustrophobia.
without a capitalist system in existence to put the lie to socialism... no one will know how much better it could be.
That in my opinion is why the USSR collapsed, their people could easily see how good we had it here, and wanted what we had.
Europe can offer live under soft socialism because they have lived under a nuclear AMERICAN umbrella for the last 65 years.
The USA has essentially shouldered the defense budget for Europe and has stared down the Soviet threat almost alone while Europeans retired from history.
F__ Them and their lefty admirers.
The fact is that Europe in it’s elitist snobbery detests the fact that their very existence is owed the a free and strong Capitalist and nuclear United States.
Their brand of socialism would never have survived if they had to defend themselves economically and militarily against the Soviets.
Their progressive and politically correct excursions in socialist form is now on the edge of bringing their system to ruin and the Muslim hoards will pick at the remnants.
America, if unwilling to turn, will fade and become unable and unwilling to help them!! The world will of course desend into chaos.
The Muslims are going to rape Europe if they haven’t already.
It’s called Euro-peon-izing
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