Les Jones

Eric Posner on American Exceptionalism

Friday, November 7th, 2008 | European Union, Political Survival Kit, Quotes | Permalink | 1 Comment |

“There are two versions of American exceptionalism. American-American exceptionalism is “we’re richer because we’re better.” European-American exceptionalism is “you’re better because you’re richer.” Both sides agree on exceptionalism, and just see different causes and implications. The Europeans expect us, on account of our wealth, to live up to (their) ideals, while we think that our wealth ought to prove to them that our ideals are better than theirs.”
 – Eric Posner

Hat tip to Instapundit.

European Vacation Benefits

Friday, December 7th, 2007 | European Union | Permalink | 4 Comments |

Europeans get quite a bit more vacation time than Americans. I never considered that might be because of the effects of taxation. Via The Corner:

The problem, employers and economists believe, has a lot to do with the 63 percent marginal tax rate paid by top earners in Denmark - a level that hits anyone making more than 360,000 Danish kroner, or about $70,000…

…[T]he high taxes, mixed with his wife’s discomfort in Denmark, meant that a job offer in Qatar three years ago was all it took to pry [Thomas Sorensen] away from Copenhagen. Now, he is ensconced in Frankfurt, setting up a new business on the side and planning to pay no more than 25 percent of his income to the German state.

“When you are at 63 percent tax, you don’t look forward to the evaluation with the boss to get a raise,” Sorensen said. “You look for more vacation or a training course in the tropics - something that you get the full benefit of.”

So if you’re a Dane making the $70,000 figure, a 5% raise would be $3,500, but after taxes you’d only realize an extra $1,295, which amounts to a 1.8% raise. With that pitiful amount for a raise extra vacation time is much more attractive.

Wikipedia’s vacation entry lists minimum vacation times for countries around the world.

As a BTW, I’d prefer mandatory minimum personal days (to be used as sick days or vacation days at the worker’s discretion) to a minimum wage. Unlike a Federal minimum wage, personal days are automatically indexed to the local economy and the worker’s labor value.

I view personal days the way I view lunch breaks - as something necessary to a healthy and sustainable work environment. If you can’t take a day off when you’re sick you’re less likely to be healthy and more likely to fall behind financially. I say that as someone who never had a job with vacation benefits until I was in my late twenties. Having paid sick days and a little discretionary time off made a huge difference in my outlook on life and work.

Ten or so personal days a year would probably be about right as a minimum. According to the Wikipedia link 25% of U.S. workers receive no vacation days at all. The average number of vacation days for all U.S. workers is only 10, so that would bump up our numbers quite a bit considering all of the people who have more vacation days and sick days that that.

Germany’s Church Tax

Monday, December 3rd, 2007 | European Union | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Marko Kloos:

In Germany, you’re sorted into Catholic or Protestant (Lutheran), depending on the professed faith of your parents (who are either Catholic or Lutheran depending on the faith of their parents, and so on.) The state takes “church tax” out of your paycheck, which goes to the church of your denomination directly. You can opt out of church tax by leaving the church altogether, but that requires some paperwork and an official declaration, so it’s a bit of a hassle.

IDNNKT. According to Wikipedia,”Church tax is a tax imposed on members of some religious congregations in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria and some parts of Switzerland.”

P.S. - Marko and his family are on their way to the new home in the Live Free or Die state. Marko, we hardly knew ye.

Record German Emigration

Thursday, August 31st, 2006 | European Union, Population | Permalink | No Comments |

From Bloomberg via Instapundit:

Koerber is one of 145,000 Germans who fled the fatherland last year amid record postwar unemployment, pushing emigration to its highest level since 1954, Federal Statistics Office figures show. Last year was also the first since the late 1960s that emigrants outnumbered Germans returning home from living abroad, the statistics office said.

Taking into account gross pay, taxes, insurance and the cost of living, doctors make more money in Switzerland, said Matthias Dettmer, 31, an assistant pathologist in Zurich from the southern German city of Tuebingen. He makes more than double his former colleagues in Germany, who earn what he calls a “cleaner’s pay.”

“I don’t know yet whether I’ll ever go back,” said Dettmer. “Under the prevailing conditions, it would be a hard sell to convince me that it’s better in Germany.” Koerber, who’s striving for permanent Canadian residency, said there’s little point trying to persuade him to return home. “I’ll never come back,” he said. “Guaranteed.”

Germany has one of the world’s lowest birthrates, ranking 223rd out of 225 countries. Adding emigration on top of that is going to devestate their culture and the tax base needed to sustain their social programs.

Sweden’s Suicide Note?

Thursday, July 20th, 2006 | European Union, Population | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Reflecting Light:

Fjordman at Gates of Vienna says he has confirmed from independent sources that Jens Orback, Democracy Minister (!) in the Swedish government, said during a radio debate: “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.”

In other words, a government minister takes it as foreordained that Swedes will become a minority in Sweden, and Muslims the majority. To him, it’s just a fact of life. It’s not as if the indigenous population could do anything about it, or should want to do anything about it.

Orback pins his hope on a Muslim majority being open and tolerant, just like they are in … in … help him out here.

It’s one more ominous confirmation that much of “old Europe” is sick unto death. It doesn’t want to preserve its national identities, its ethnic majorities, its traditional cultures, its system of government (except for the welfare state). God is dead; tolerance is God. If Sweden is to become part of Dar Al-Islam, well, who are Swedes to say that their way of life is better? It might cause offense.

Better to simply write the suicide note and make sure that the beneficiary is clearly spelled out in the will.

Highly Recommended Article on Europe’s Economic Future

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 | European Union | Permalink | No Comments |

From Brussels Journal, Europe’s Ailing Social Model: Facts &Fairy-Tales looks at Europe’s liabilities. Not just their official debt, but thei long-term liabilties of their social programs and pension system.

Unfunded pension liabilities now average some 285% of GDP [pdf], more than 4 times the officially published public debt figures. Total public liabilities now exceed assets in most EU countries, and are causing runaway debt service. Richard Disney calculates [pdf] that if social policies are kept unchanged, tax hikes of as much as 5 to 15 percentage points will be necessary over the next couple of decades merely to avoid the rate of indebtedness increasing any further.

Unfortunately, this will just kill growth completely. Europe’s present social model is unsustainable because it is based on robbery of future generations. Keeping the system in place would jeopardize the next generation’s future with an unbearable and uncompressible tax burden, and would seriously add to the risk of a total collapse of Europe. Moreover these expansionary social policies have not worked so far. In spite of the largest debt buildup in history Europe’s growth has remained weak anyway. Europe’s social model is built largely on credit to be paid back by its own children.

and this, on inflated European taxes:

Gwartney’s findings provide the final explanation why continental European economies, such as Belgium, no longer grow. The Belgian tax burden is 20% above the optimal tax level burden as calculated by Primo Pevcin [pdf]. It is 9 %-points above the OECD average and 15 %-points higher than the tax level in the US and Japan.

WorkForAll’s empirical study analyzing 25 plausible causes of economic growth in a comprehensive regression arrives at the same conclusions. The best way to spur growth is by reducing the tax burden and Europe’s languishing government sector, and by shifting taxes from income to consumption.

Adapting Europe’s Tax Structure for Globalization

With an excess proportion of direct taxes, Europe’s tax structure is totally unadapted to globalization. Direct taxes on profits, wages and capital increase the cost of domestic production, and in doing so have exactly the opposite effect of import duties. Direct taxes roughly double the cost of Europe’s domestic production, making Europe’s produce uncompetitive both in the home market and in global markets. Just as import duties cause protectionist distortions in world trade, direct taxes do the same, but in the absurd opposite sense. Globalisation therefore necessitates more urgently than ever a shift of the tax burden from production to consumption.

The author suggests that European countires adopt the highly successful Irish approach of not just low taxes, but low taxes that are spread evenly between production, labor, and consumption.

Mark Steyn on European Welfare and Demographics

Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 | European Union | Permalink | No Comments |

The latest Steyn:

If you want the state of Europe in a nutshell, skip the German election coverage and consider this news item from the south of France: a fellow in Marseilles is being charged with fraud because he lived with the dead body of his mother for five years in order to continue receiving her pension of 700 euros a month.

She was 94 when she croaked, so she’d presumably been enjoying the old government cheque for a good three decades or so, but her son figured he might as well keep the money rolling in until her second century and, with her corpse tucked away under a pile of rubbish in the living room, the female telephone voice he put on for the benefit of the social services office was apparently convincing enough. As the Reuters headline put it: “Frenchman lived with dead mother to keep pension.”

That’s the perfect summation of Europe: welfare addiction over demographic reality.

Read the whole thing. I also liked this:

But the election results in Germany and elsewhere suggest that, in fact, nothing makes a citizen more selfish than lavish welfare and that once he’s enjoying the fruits thereof he couldn’t give a hoot about the broader societal interest. “Social democracy” turns out to be explicitly anti-social.

Yep, and in my experience you can make a more general case that getting handouts makes people selfish, oddly enough. People who can’t fend for themselves and depend on handouts are the most selfish and self-centered people you’ll ever meet. Entitlement is terrible for the human spirit.

Europe Learns the Wrong Lessons

Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 | European Union | Permalink | No Comments |

The American Enterprise:

And the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that economic growth will slacken even further in the countries employing the Euro as currency. From an anemic growth rate of 1.3 percent per year between 2010 and 2020, OECD economists forecast a decline to under 1 percent annual growth during the decade following. Those little gray numbers are more than marks on paper

Germany’s Economic Turnaround

Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 | European Union | Permalink | No Comments |

Marginal Revolution points to a cover story in The Economist that confirms their predictions for a German economic turnaround.

Thanks to the intense pressure that they have been under in the past few years, Germany’s big companies have restructured and cut their bloated cost base. This process has for once been helped by the trade unions, which had been a stubborn obstacle to change. German workers have belatedly recognised that change has become essential, which is why they have been ready over the past year or so to accept such innovations as more decentralised pay bargaining, longer hours and even wage cuts. Thanks in part to this new flexibility, unit labour costs, a benchmark of competitiveness, have fallen sharply relative to other countries. In the past five years, Germany, long the most costly place in Europe in which to do business, has won a new competitive edge over France, Italy, the Netherlands and even Britain. That is a big reason why, last year, it regained its position as the world’s biggest exporter.

“Let’s face facts, Europe’s being run by cowards”

Tuesday, August 9th, 2005 | European Union | Permalink | No Comments |

Mathias Doepfner in The Australian:

Where does this self-satisfied reaction come from? Does it arise because we are so moral? I fear that it stems from the fact that we Europeans are so materialistic, so devoid of a moral compass.

For his policy of confronting Islamic terrorism head-on, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of additional national debt, and a massive and persistent burden on the US economy. But he does this because, unlike most of Europe, he realises that what is at stake is literally everything that really matters to free people.

While we criticise the capitalistic robber barons of the US because they seem too sure of their priorities, we timidly defend our welfare states. “Stay out of it. It could get expensive,” we cry.

More on the Death of Multiculturalism

Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 | European Union | Permalink | No Comments |

From The Age via Tim Blair:

It is almost certain now that last week’s attacks on the London underground were carried out by young British men of Pakistani background. British intelligence estimates that 10,000 to 15,000 Muslims living in Britain support al-Qaeda.

It was not supposed to be like this. The idea was that tolerance and liberalism towards migrants would in turn make migrants tolerant and good citizens. Instead, Britain became a haven for terrorists. Did the bomb blasts in the London Underground mark the death of multiculturalism?

Multiculturalism means that migrants are not only allowed but encouraged to retain and celebrate their own cultures. To do so they receive financial help from governments to build schools and places of worship and community centres. Canada started it. We’ve had it here and it’s mainly been wonderful, enriching the whole of the society. But is it now time to start thinking more about its limits? Couscous yes, child marriage no?

[...]

I have long valued multiculturalism. But there is something wrong when second and third-generation Muslims can believe the society in which they grew up - indeed, into which they were born - is evil to the core and needs to be destroyed. There is something wrong with multiculturalism when Muslims can attend mosques in Europe that are more radical than some in the Middle East.

At the very least, we should insist on the right to know what is being taught in schools and mosques. Perhaps it is time to say, it’s been wonderful, but a few things need to be made clear. Perhaps it is time to say, you are welcome, but this is the way it is here.

Go Read Jeff Jarvis

Monday, July 18th, 2005 | European Union | Permalink | No Comments |

On the London bombers and the myth of poor, deprived terrorists:

When it turned out that the London bombings were carried out by four young Muslim men born in England, it seemed to give a lie to Tom Friedman’s theory that Muslim terrorism sprouts from the anger of young men in Arab nations who have no hope of economic prosperity and freedom.

Here were young men who may not have been born into Windsor Castle, but they were living in a land of freedom and opportunity. So how can they be portrayed as anything other than what they are: murderers?

And, via Insty, on the death of the more mindless form of European multi-culturalism:

So where does all this end up in my mind? Tolerance is good and necessary and civilized. Multiculturism is good; I’m so multi-culti I don’t know how mult-culti I am. But tolerance for criminals is always dangerous and wrong-headed. See the post below on the angry young men. We would not tolerate and understand and whisper about KKK killers or Nazis or serial killers. Why should we tiptoe tolerantly around the murderers of 7/7 or 9/11 or any day in Iraq today just because they are multi to our culti? We should not.

Mark Steyn on Europe’s Attempts to Linger Awhile

Thursday, July 14th, 2005 | European Union | Permalink | No Comments |

It’s behind the subscription wall now, but this Mark Steyn essay is fanstastic. You can read a copyright-infringing version here.

When to the moment I shall say