Paul Krugman: Learning From Europe

[marmar]

from the NYT:



Learning From Europe
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 10, 2010


As health care reform nears the finish line, there is much wailing and rending of garments among conservatives. And I’m not just talking about the tea partiers. Even calmer conservatives have been issuing dire warnings that Obamacare will turn America into a European-style social democracy. And everyone knows that Europe has lost all its economic dynamism.

Strange to say, however, what everyone knows isn’t true. Europe has its economic troubles; who doesn’t? But the story you hear all the time — of a stagnant economy in which high taxes and generous social benefits have undermined incentives, stalling growth and innovation — bears little resemblance to the surprisingly positive facts. The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.

Actually, Europe’s economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe — official economic statistics or your own lying eyes — the eyes have it.

In any case, the statistics confirm what the eyes see.

It’s true that the U.S. economy has grown faster than that of Europe for the past generation. Since 1980 — when our politics took a sharp turn to the right, while Europe’s didn’t — America’s real G.D.P. has grown, on average, 3 percent per year. Meanwhile, the E.U. 15 — the bloc of 15 countries that were members of the European Union before it was enlarged to include a number of former Communist nations — has grown only 2.2 percent a year. America rules!

Or maybe not. All this really says is that we’ve had faster population growth. Since 1980, per capita real G.D.P. — which is what matters for living standards — has risen at about the same rate in America and in the E.U. 15: 1.95 percent a year here; 1.83 percent there. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/opinion/11krugman.html?ref=opinion

[gateley]

1. Therein lies one of our biggest problems -- we seem unwilling to

learn from others who have gone before.

[PDJane]

2. That's because America is special.........

and Americans have nothing to learn from anyone else. Americans will do it themselves, and make their own solutions....even if they screw things up in the process.

[gateley]

4. Yep. Don't want to appear "weak" by admitting somebody else

might have a better idea.

[virolai]

5. let me say...

First, there is not a country called Europe but a bunch of states with very different ways of life, regulation, taxation, etc

Second, there is not a healthcare system managed by the European Commission (EU executive branch) but different and independent local models: from single-payer socialized medicine in Spain or UK to mandatory and competitive private insurance in the Netherlands or Switzerland. The Swiss have rejected to have a national social security system.

Third, civil rights are not equally regulated. For example, Poland and Ireland ban abortion. Most states (France and Germany included) don´t recognize gay marriage. And only France separates church and state in a rigorous way.

Fourth, the myth says that nordic countries are the most developed because they have the higher taxes and best public services. Not true. The most productive, exporting and rich region (and less unemployed) in Europe is around the Alps, specially southern Germany, which is pretty conservative (socially and fiscally). The german public employment rate is the lowest in Europe, their individual fiscal effort is a half of that in nordic countries, and youth unemployment is around 8% (18% in USA, 20% in EU, 27% in Sweden).

Fifth, according to Heritage and Cato (US conservative think tanks) there are a bunch of european nations close to beat United States in economic freedom rankings.

Sixth, is stupid (and annoying) to compare countries like United States with much smaller ones. In USA there are more illegal immigrants than danes and finnish people in the world. The US demographic dinamics (+ 3 million people each year) and racial diversity makes your country much closer to Central and South America than to Europe.

PD: sorry for my english.

[KittyWampus]

6. Welcome to DU. Your English is quite good, congratulations on that. Where are you located?

It's great to have input from around the globe here on DU.

Please don't let anyone scare you off this place. :)

[PDJane]

7. Your English is fine.

However, the fact remains that Americans won't even learn from their Northern neighbours if they can help it. One of the problems that has characterized the US since the beginning is the myth of American exceptionalism.

No, the US is not comparable to Europe in a lot of ways, but the American economic model has been proven not to work even for Americans. The rape, pillage and move on model is wearing thin; the planet is finite. The emphasis has never been on preservation, which is an interest and ability that Europeans do have. Of course, the Europeans got over the rape, pillage and move on thing a bit earlier, too, which is handy. Britain learned an important lesson after Victoria; one can have democracy, or one can have Empire. One cannot, efficiently, have both.

And yes, the educational system in Europe teaches different things and teaches them in different ways than America...and there is a class system even in public schools, which I find apalling. There are better ways to handle the situation!

Yes, there are illegal immigrants; Canada has fewer than the US, but we have them. We also have a higher number of refugees than the US has. Things like amnesty, work programmes, application for citizenship inside the country, etc, are necessary. We have still found that universal health care pays in ways that are hard to quantify; for instance, if you go to a site that is giving flu injections, like the Eaton's Centre, you merely have to give an address in the city where you are staying....and you will get your injection, health card or no. It does cut down on the pandemic risk, and it's useful. Educating those 'illegals' is no bad thing either; you get more productive members of society that way.

Yes, France has a very strict separation of church and state, and it's admirable. In fact, the 'Founding Fathers' were mostly deists, and regarded that separation of church and state as an important and civilized concept. However, whether that separation is vigorously observed or not, most of Europe, Canada and South America would be apalled at the thought of merging the law of the land with biblical law....something that the GOP vice-presidential candidate thinks is A Very Good Thing. Of course, there's always the necessity of determining just what the bible has to say on any question, which is a question that no-one has really been able to answer satisfatorily, but I digress.

A lot of this has to do with mass propaganda, a tactic that the US pioneered. (Frankly, the Third Reich didn't lose the war; they just changed venues.) The US and British governments were, in ways that now seem incredible, more tightly woven with Nazi Germany than we'd all like to believe. The tactics have been used quite well; there are still a number of uneducated people who believe in the importance of blood lines, a symptom of Eugenics. Eugenics was, contrary to popular belief, pioneered in America....and sent to the Nazis (by friends of the Bush family, oddly enough).

All countries do stupid and ignorant and brutal things; the best ones learn from their own mistakes and those of their neighbours. The US is hard to teach.

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. 'First, there is not a country called Europe but a bunch of states with very different ways

of life, regulation, taxation, etc'

But with much more that unites them overall than what separates them.

'Second, there is not a healthcare system managed by the European Commission (EU executive branch) but different and independent local models: from single-payer socialized medicine in Spain or UK to mandatory and competitive private insurance in the Netherlands or Switzerland. The Swiss have rejected to have a national social security system.'

Switzerland. So one country defines Europe as a hopeless hotch-potch of wildy disparate values? I wonder you have the gall to post arrant nonsense like this on DU. Private insurance works in some countries in Europe (it wouldn't in the US or its offshore poodle), because the respective Governments regulate them, to protect, not the companies' profits, but the public's health.

'Third, civil rights are not equally regulated. For example, Poland and Ireland ban abortion. Most states (France and Germany included) don´t recognize gay marriage. And only France separates church and state in a rigorous way.'

If only the EU were not doing its best to jettison its matrix of Christianity.

'Fourth, the myth says that nordic countries are the most developed because they have the higher taxes and best public services. Not true. The most productive, exporting and rich region (and less unemployed) in Europe is around the Alps, specially southern Germany, which is pretty conservative (socially and fiscally). The german public employment rate is the lowest in Europe, their individual fiscal effort is a half of that in nordic countries, and youth unemployment is around 8% (18% in USA, 20% in EU, 27% in Sweden).'

This is the most scandalous of all your 'points'. The 'most developed countries with the best public services are INDEED those that pay the higher taxes, because development is not synonymous with the breakneck rush for material affluence for the few, which characerizes the pathological avarice of the leaders of the US and UK: One the solitary, current imperial power; the other yesterday's imperial power. There is a connection with the plundering, imperial mindset. The working class of the imperial masters is always the last of the colonies, plundered mercilessly by their own ruling class.

'Fifth, according to Heritage and Cato (US conservative think tanks) there are a bunch of european nations close to beat United States in economic freedom rankings.'

To talk of America in terms of economic freedom is anachronistic and was always intrinsically, deeply dishonest. The welfare of the country as a whole, including its meanest citizens, loomed very large in Adam Smith's vision. But it wasn't convenient for Heritage and Cato's finest to acknowledge that, with the result that the country's wealth in the US and UK became increasingly polarised, tested to near destruction. Utter, utter madness, as such rank dishonesty was bound to reflect. Smith's view that income-tax should be as closely proportionate to income as possible, was probably to the left of Marx, and as for his warnings that businessmen needed to be VERY closely controlled, if they were to be prevented from conspiring against the common good at the slightest opportunity, that hardly smacked of your 'economic freedoms'.

'Sixth, is stupid (and annoying) to compare countries like United States with much smaller ones. In USA there are more illegal immigrants than danes and finnish people in the world. The US demographic dinamics (+ 3 million people each year) and racial diversity makes your country much closer to Central and South America than to Europe.'

Utter balderdash. This is about the ethos of a country, the fruits of its Government's priorities. Not about blind consumerism and material self-aggrandisement of the individual at the expense of the public. Freedom implies responsibily, not reckless, material ambition and avarice. Parents are not tyrranised by their responsibility to their children, nor, when the situation arises, the children by their obligation to care for their ageing parents in their hour of need. These are privileges, and felt as such, when felt aright.

[clear eye]

3. The cons don't have to worry. This "reform" doesn't resemble European programs

in the least.

The European programs for the most part have taken off the burden of insuring people from their businesses, which give them an edge over ours.

Notice Krugman doesn't actually say the Senate bill is quite similar to European plans, he just implies it when he says that people should be reassured about the imminent U.S. plan by the experience of the Europeans. Something is going on here and I don't like the smell of it.

[anonymous171]

8. Europe isn't maintaining an empire right now. nt

[PDJane]

10. Quite true,

and that's a large part of the situation. I pointed out up there somewhere that you can have freedom or empire, but not both.....and that a decent economy in a finite world requires preservation of resources.