As David Brooks accurately notes in his Op-Ed Fear and Rejection - New York Times

Europeans seem to look to the future with more fear than hope. As Anatole Kaletsky noted in The Times of London, in continental Europe “unemployment has been stuck between 8 and 11 percent since 1991 and growth has reached 3 percent only once in those 14 years.“

The Western European standard of living is about a third lower than the American standard of living, and it’s sliding. European 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 economic 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.

This is the context with which we should both look at the recentEU votes as well as with American liberalism and the arguments from the left on everything from work rules to pensions an social security. As Brooks notes “The core fact is that the European model is foundering under the fact that billions of people are willing to work harder than the Europeans are. Europeans clearly love their way of life, but don’t know how to sustain it.” The exact same thing could be said of American liberals.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 3rd, 2005 at 12:59 am by Insider and is filed under I knew I'd use my Econ major. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.