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Author
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Topic: The EU
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Mezcalhead
VoivodFan
Member # 26
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posted June 10, 2005 11:59
    
A snip from a recent editiorial by David Brooks of the New York Times on the recent rejection of the EU constitution:"The western european standard of living is about a third lower than the american standard of living, and its sliding. Euoprean output per capita is less than that of 46 of the 50 american states and about on par with Arkansas. There is little prospect of robust growth returning any time soon.
Once it was plausible to argue that the european quality of life made up for the economice underperformance, but those arguments look more and more strained, in part because demographic trends make even the current conditions unsustainable. Europe's population is aging and shrinking. By 2040, the European median age will be around 50. Nearly a third of the population will be over 65. Public spending on retirees will have to grow by a third, sending europe into a vicious spiral of higher taxes and less growth.
The core fact is the Euoprean model is foundering because billions of people are willing to work harder than Europeans are. Europeans love their way of life, but don't know how to sustain it.
Over the last few decades, American liberals have lauded the German model or the Swedish model or the European model. But these models are not flexible enough for the modern world. They encourage people to cling fiercely to entitlements their nation cannot afford. And far from breeding a confident, progressive outlook, they breed a reactionary fear of the future that comes in left and right wing varieties- a defensiveness, a tendency to lash out ferociously at anybody who proposes fundamental reform or at any group, like immigrants, that alters the fabric of life.
This the the chief problem with the welfare state, which has nothing to do with the success or efficiency of any individudal program. The liberal project of the post war era bred a stultifying conservatism, a fear of dynamic flexibility, a greater concern for gaurding what exists than for creating what doesn't.
Thats a truth that applies just as much on this side of the pond."
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LyKcantropen
VoivodFan
Member # 162
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posted June 15, 2005 10:25
The problem with comparing "European output per capita" with "the level of Arkansas" is that it's a generalisation. It's an average. So a country with high output is lumped in with others with low output, which gives a skewed impression.If you want to compare, compare individual nations. Better still, compare specific populations with similar characteristics between nations to really see an accurate difference in "quality of life" etc. When you compare a collection of diparate entities ("Europe") to a single entity ("The United States", which is not so bad or a particular State, which is a very poor comparison), you get skewed results, which then get wrapped up in the form of a statistic (which looks scientific and persuasive, no matter the actuality). Statistics can be used to show anything, if you just know how to skew them. This is, of course, also an issue with the statistics Portuga posted, and as Warcorpse pointed out. Comparatively, the USA - and the other developed nations on that list - tend to have a high median income. I know the median income in the UK, for instance, is about £15,000 a year, whereas in somewhere like Kenya it's more like £600. Having said that, there are big economic differences between the US and EU, sure. You'll probably find that more Americans are fall into the "better off" category than Europeans. But you can't objectively measure "quality of life" and say that "it's a third lower". I fucking hate statistics. 
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