Les Jones

European Union > Europe Learns the Wrong Lessons

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—over time they will translate into notably pinched lives. Already, higher U.S. growth over the last generation has given average Americans a standard of living about 40 percent richer than average continental Europeans. Continue that a few more decades and we will no longer be peers, but two very different cultures.

And this:

Even in France, Nicolas Sarkozy—who could become France’s president within the next few years—recently encouraged his countrymen to be less dismissive of American and British alternatives. “Where do we get off looking down our noses at countries that have half the unemployment rate we do? Don’t we have an interest in looking for models elsewhere?”

I have to call shenanigans on this part, though:

Look upon the suicide clinic in Switzerland that administers a glass of schnapps and then a peaceful death by injection. Note the German laws that, first, legalized prostitution two years ago, and then started requiring laid-off waitresses and secretaries to entertain job offers from the sex industry or face the loss ofunemployment benefits.

That was an urban legend, as I found out the hard way.