Obama's Future for America: Europe?
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Author:
Harrison
Tags:
congress Debt defense spending deficit Democrats european unemployment france hypocrites la greve Liberals Obama paris strikes sncf social welfare socialism Spending stimulus taxes Unions welfare state
The results of socialism in Europe.
Back in the 90s I lived in Europe for a few years – France to be specific – and I gained a new understanding of what it meant to be French from an economic perspective – a feeling of entitlement from the government on the one hand and a puzzlement about why it was so tough to find a job on the other. Of course, both of these things were related.
One of the common occurrences when you live in Paris, France is to be able to walk to work or school when one of the numerous unions go on strike. I can’t tell you how many times the bus drivers, metro drivers, or some other union would strike, leaving France’s capital city paralyzed. There were a few times where I could not actually leave town for the weekend because the SNCF (train system) was shut down over some dispute or another. And let’s not forget the truck drivers who liked their summertime protests with roadblocks to make a point to the government about their job security.
I also learned to never fly Air France because, at a moment’s notice, they would go on strike and leave passengers stranded. This is still true to this day!
During this time I also knew quite a few French people my age or slightly older. One thing I heard often was how difficult it was to find a job. The government mandatory 35 hour work week was in effect because, French leaders said, it would allow more people to keep their jobs (making more people work fewer hours would somehow allow for the hiring of people!). From what I saw it didn’t seem to be working and it still isn’t.
The basic problem in France (and many other European countries) is that, after the U.S. helped to re-build them after WWII we also used our money to protect them not only from each other but from the Soviets. Because “Europe” did not have to field a large military or spend much on defense they could take all of that money and plow it into social services and benefits… the entitlements the French would strike about so often in the 1990s (and to this day). Europeans obviously don’t like to admit that because they were able to hide under the skirts of the U.S. military they were able to enjoy 12 week vacations but it’s true.
So it was with interest that I read this article in the Wall Street Journal about this very same subject:
It’s clear by now that President Barack Obama wants to turn the United States into something more like Germany or Belgium — a “social democracy” in which redistribution (“spread the wealth around,” as Mr. Obama explained to Joe the Plumber during the campaign) is an expanding government’s main concern.
Europe, for its part, has reciprocated our president’s apparent love of their system by treating him like a messiah. He is the man, they sense, who will finally make good on George H.W. Bush’s famous promise in 1988 to make America a “kinder and gentler nation.”
Alas, this mutual love is self-defeating. That’s because Mr. Obama will doom the low-growth, weak-defense European model to the extent he gets the U.S. to emulate it.
Consider some basic facts: Europe has been riding on our economic coattails and sheltering under our defense umbrella since the end of World War II nearly 65 years ago. Our markets have been open to European goods, and our strong currency and relative affluence — the product of our much-maligned free-market economic model — have provided Europe with a ready buyer.
By assuming Europe’s defense the U.S. has, in effect, allowed it the luxury of extremely expensive and ultimately unsustainable social-welfarism.
What I saw a lot of when I lived in France.
Yes, the “European model” hailed by such thinkers as Gwyneth Paltrow for it’s “humanity” and loved by Liberals everywhere as a model for the “harsh” United States only can exist because America is the engine of world growth. Tie the U.S. economy down the way Europeans have over the decades with high taxes, numerous government regulations, and entrepreneurial-sapping laws and you will get the kind of life reported upon by Foreign Policy magazine:
In the past several weeks, European universities have graduated their final-year students. Across the continent, hundreds of thousands of young people have left the cradle of school and started the search for work. But many of them won’t find it. This year’s graduating class is running smack into the worst employment market in decades — a situation that threatens long-term social and economic trauma.
Throughout this decade, Europe has had higher rates of youth unemployment — about 16 or 17 percent — than the OECD average.
Unemployment among job seekers under 25 in France has risen more than 40 percent in the past year, while total unemployment rose by about 26 percent. A third of Britain’s unemployed are under 25. Youth unemployment is nudging 40 percent in Spain.
What has caused all of this is, to put it succinctly, socialism:
States such as Romania and Hungary gave parents paid maternity leaves and guaranteed them their jobs back afterward. This caused an upward blip in birthrates, which peaked in the mid-1980s before falling again along with the Berlin Wall.
Employers in Europe don’t like to hire workers because, once they are in the system, it can be almost impossible to fire them because there are many government regulations to be followed. Employers, trying to keep their bottom lines in the black, hire temporary workers instead and the government pays for all of their benefits.
The Wall Street Journal summed it up best:
The great irony here is that the European model American leftists envy couldn’t survive without its despised cowboy counterparty. If the U.S. economy weakens because of increased regulation, heavy-handed unionization, and higher taxes and debt to support an expensive social agenda — all policies Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress are pushing hard — it will hurt Europe.
Thus Europe will be increasingly unable to sustain its current welfare state, the very model that the left in the United States adores.
The fact that the Left in the U.S. are trying to create a European model here only shows their complete and utter ignorance of history, economics, and human nature. Let us hope they fail in their dreams because I saw what socialism did for the youth of France and I don’t want to see what it will do to the next generation of Americans.
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07:18
“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
– Thomas Sowell
08:13
…or so stupid as to accept it.
07:21
Another thought-provoking post, Harrison. Wish the Europeans would stop demanding so much that the USA model the states after them, and that they would look at America’s positives and model themselves after the USA. That may be too much of a challenge though, because it requires hardwork and not instant gratification/entitlements.
Al´s last blog ..Shhh, “loose lips sink ships”
22:22
The USA already has socialism–for the rich. And the WSJ is perhaps not the first place to turn for an unbiased study of socialism …
22:25
You only have to look at the sluggish economies of Europe, the high unemployment, and the civil unrest recently in France to see its effects. Even the Socialists in France, England, Germany, and Italy have been thrown out of office… what does that tell you?
What is socialism for the rich, exactly?
00:36
Great post. I too lived in Europe for a short while (England, Spain) and came to know their employment practices. I found it ironic that the country’s with the strongest job security laws, like Germany and France, were also the places hardest to find jobs.
The 35 hour work week in France never made sense to me; The shorter work week meant a higher wage rate per hour which tends to reduce the number of workers hired overall–not good for the economy or standard of living in the long run.
vulcanhammer´s last blog ..Libertarians Discuss Health Care On National T.V.
00:31
Socialism rarely makes sense. I knew several French who left to come to America where there was freedom to create and grow their business without the government telling them what to do.
08:14
You would like Mark Steyn’s book America Alone. He takes things one step further and says because Europe no longer had to fund their defense budgets, they were able to engage in vast socialist experiments, and the result is a bunch of 40 year-old children who still live with their parents, have no kids of their own, and rely on the state to provide for all of their needs. He is trying to figure out why birth rates are so low, and he comes to the conclusion that when the state starts to care for all of your basic needs from cradle to grave, your life pretty much becomes a decadent waste. Pretty good description of Europe from my experiences from living there for a few years.
Our military can protect these babies from military invasions, but obviously we haven’t intervened when it comes to immigration invasions. Pakistan was the first muslim nuclear power, Iran will be second, and France will be third. The European as we know it is an endangered species, and with birthrates of 1.2 their populations will cut in half every generation. Socialism doesn’t just fail on an economic level, its biggest failures are social ones – hence the name.
Burro´s last blog ..Want safety from the Democrats? Join Al Qaeda
00:32
What the Moors couldn’t do Muslim reproduction will. The Europeans don’t seem to give a damn about fighting for their culture and I predict within a few generations people will wonder who the Christians in Europe were.
01:55
Sorry, but do I have to take this posting serious?.)
You make some strong statements such as ‘U.S. helped to re-build them after WWII we also used our money to protect them not only from each other but from the Soviets’
I am sure that you didnt fight during the second world war, since the people I met, who really fought, never would say this.
The USA with its Marshall plan helped the European countries by helping itself. Dont tell me that the USA only helped us, it helped itself first.
Second, the European countries never wanted to be in the same mess again and didnt want the USA to ‘protect’ us from ghosts such as the ‘great sovjet empire’. Do you really think that people in the former sovjet block such as Czech R, Poland, Bulgaria, etc. want a system as in the USA? You are wrong.
The facts the writer of the WSJ gives about the OESCO are completely wrong. Check http://www.oecd.org/document/57/0,3343,en_2649_37457_43136377_1_1_1_1,00.html
Its obvious that the writers of these articles can not read.
Lastly: an USA which education systems sucks, which banking systems sucks, which health care sucks, which manufacturing sucks (can you explain me why Americans always buy products from Japan, Korea, European countries?) which is indepth for more than 1 trillion € not dollars (also that went down under your ‘world leader’ Bush) how can you defend the USA policy? As the USA is almost bankrupt?
cheers
hans
Hans´s last blog ..Day Opening – July 19
19:44
The American nuclear umbrella DID keep Europe from falling to the Soviets and the US DID have troops in Europe for those reasons. And it worked. Reagan rammed MX nuclear missiles into Germany and made Europe safer. FACTS. The US DOES spend tons more money on defense as a percentage of our economy than Europe. FACT. Much of this was to fight the Soviets in Europe. FACT. America did benefit from the Marshall Plan but wihtout it Europeans would be speaking Russian. The Europeans didn’t want to be in the same mess but they DID want America to keep them safe from the Soviets. They liked to put down America when convenient for political reasons but they NEEDED us to be there.
Without the strength of the American economy Europe would have few exports and less money. We are one of the very largest importers of European goods… everything from French wine to German cars and without our FREE and STRONG marketplace Europe would whither.
Yes, some Europeans did fight in WWII but there were many Quislings there (including half of France). The people of Europe are not bad but their leaders, overall, were. Europe was too politically and economicially divided to put up any fight in WWII except the Brits but that’s only because they are on an island and got a real leader in the form of Churchill who had been a political failure before the war because he was a hawk and idiots like Chamberlain were running things.
Americans make many fine products such as construction equipment, airplanes, medical supplies, and design things that make the world run like chips and software. American cars in Europe (Opel, Ford, etc) are very good but in the US it is the government-run mentality and high labor costs that stunted their growth. And plenty of people buy American cars, just not in places you lived like Miami.
And when the Asia economy went into the crapper in the 1990s it was the American economy that prevented a worldwide depression from setting in. I think Germany is the only well run country in Europe from an economic perspective. American greed and consumer greed and willingness to go into debt are serious problems that nobody here seeks to address but I’d live here rather than there any day of the week.
18:09
You lived in France; there must be some things about it that you liked better than the United States? (at least the food was probably better) My point being that maybe you don’t have to adopt every single feature of European culture and government and economic systems. But maybe we could try to adopt the things that they do better than we do, without necessarily falling into the traps that they have fallen into. I don’t see why, for example, we couldn’t build high speed trains in the United States the way they have in Europe. And I don’t see why we couldn’t adopt at least some of the features of the health care systems they have in France or Germany that seem to be working better than what we have here. And I also don’t see why we couldn’t consider higher gasoline taxes and possibly a national VAT as a way of solving some of the fiscal and political and environmental problems that we have. I don’t see why we would necessarily have to adopt European-style protections for employees, and other rules that may limit people’s ability to find employment, if we picked up on some of the good ideas the Europeans have. I also don’t think that picking up on good ideas that other countries may have discovered would lead to the dreaded socialism that is always thrown out to scare people whenever someone suggests any kind of public improvement.
Joe Markowitz´s last blog ..What’s Your Plan?
18:59
I did enjoy the SNCF when it wasn’t on strike. I enjoyed taking the TGV from Paris to London and it was very convenient and the ICE in Germany is very nice, too. People always talk about high speed rail. The thing is, it is driven by many structural differences. In Europe they tax gasoline and diesel very heavily and spend a ton of money on trains. That takes a lot of money away from citizens. Aside from subways, trains are the most expensive form of transit available. Also, the distances are much shorter between cities/countries in Europe than in the US. High speed rail would only make sense between Washington, D.C. and Boston. In fact, Amtrak loses money on almost all of their routes but the NE corridor. Here’s a good economic analysis of high speed rail and its costs:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=474381&Ntt=high+speed+rail
What I enjoyed most about Europe was its history, not its economics.
And if Obama wants revenue and thinks imported oil is so bad why is he against raising the gas tax? Why..? Because it is political suicide so he has to look for more covert ways to accomplish the same thing.
23:55
I don’t think that its an issue to adopt (or consider adopting) certain European (or any other region) ideas for our own country. However, why is it always the big, intrusive government plans that people want us to adopt? Why doesn’t someone suggest Sweden’s establishment of a nationwide school voucher program which is working quite nicely? Why doesn’t someone suggest adopting Switzerland’s national health care policy which mandates that everyone purchase private health care insurance–if someone can’t afford to purchase it, they are granted vouchers (very Milton Friedman)? Why not adopt Canada’s housing example and get rid of the interest deduction for home ownership or better yet, get rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Getting rid of those things would prevent housing bubbles.
Instead, we are getting ready to adopt a Cap and Trade scheme that works horribly in Europe. Why?
I’m all for adopting ideas that work and that will not act like an anchor on the rest of the national economy.
vulcanhammer´s last blog ..Libertarians Discuss Health Care On National T.V.