Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun-Times uses the occasion of the “non” vote in France to comment on a book by Guardian UK columnist Will Hutton. His column reminds us of what makes European economic philosophy so wrong to us:

(Hutton) is not arguing that America is betraying the Founding Fathers, but that the Founding Fathers themselves got it hopelessly wrong. He compares the American and French Revolutions, and decides the latter was better because instead of the radical individualism of the 13 colonies the French promoted ”a new social contract.”

Well, you never know. It may be the defects of America’s Founders that help explain why the United States has lagged so far behind France in technological innovation, economic growth, military performance, standard of living, etc.

Entranced by his Europhilia, Hutton insists that “all western democracies subscribe to a broad family of ideas that are liberal or leftist.” Given that New Hampshire has been a continuous democracy for two centuries longer than Germany, this seems a doubtful proposition. It would be more accurate to say that almost all European nations subscribe to a broad family of ideas that are statist. Or, as Hutton has it, “the European tradition is much more mindful that men and women are social animals and that individual liberty is only one of a spectrum of values that generate a good society.”

Precisely. And it’s the willingness to subordinate individual liberty to what Hutton calls “the primacy of society” that has blighted the continent for over a century: Statism — or “the primacy of society” — is what fascism, Nazism, communism and now European Union all have in common. In fairness, after the first three, European Union seems a comparatively benign strain of the disease — not a Blitzkrieg, just a Bitzkrieg, an accumulation of fluffy trivial pan-European laws that nevertheless takes for granted that the natural order is a world in which every itsy-bitsy activity is licensed and regulated and constitutionally defined by government.

The sad thing is that there does not seem to be any serious thought in the EU over whether this statist approach is healthy in the long run. Neither the status quo nor a more integrated Europe are going to stop the growing gap between the major European economies and the US. In the past 25 years, France has fallen from about 82% of US per-capita GDP to about 75%; Germany, Italy, and the UK have remained about constant at 81%, 77%, and 70% respectively (source: IMF data). This means that every year the US, already the leading large economy in per-capita GDP, moves a little farther ahead. And over the long haul, that gives the US options that lower-performing economies, straining under high taxes, regulation, and inefficient and large public sectors, just won’t have.

The European approach seems to be to divide the existing spoils rather than grow the pie.
But which people will be better off thirty years from now?

[Hat Tip: Scared Monkeys]

Technorati Tags: Europe, France

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 1st, 2005 at 5:00 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under I knew I'd use my Econ major, France, We Taunt You, Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.