Les Jones

Healthcare Around the World

Tyler Cowen points to a study of healthcare in the U.S, Germany, and the UK in treating diabetes, cholelithiasis (gallstones), breast cancer, and lung cancer. The U.S. system was the best at treating patients for three of the four conditions, when measured in terms of quality of life and life expectancy after treatment.

The Future of Europe

Tyler Cowen looks at economic hope and despair in Europe.

3. A recent survey in France suggests that 70 percent of French schoolchildren aspire to become bureaucrats rather than captains of industry. (See the IHT, June 9, "Divided We Graumble," by Roger Cohen, p.2.)

4. The beauty of European cities typically stems from 1920 or earlier, when much of Europe was economically freer than the United States. How would U.S./Europe comparisons feel to us if all of Europe had been built after the second World War? How many people would then think that the "European way of life" is superior.

So we can now prove empirically that communism doesn't work. History gave us controlled experiments. Two countries - Germany and Korea - were divided by war. One side was left communits, one side capitalist.

Forty years later we saw the difference. South Korea produces cars, ships, computers and cell phones. North Korea can't even feed itself. East Germany turned into a poor, polluted nation that could barely crank out Trebants. West Germany became prosperous and produced Volkswagens, BMWs, and Mercedes.

Europe has largely gone socialist - communism lite. It may take another forty years to fully see the results, but things don't look good. Birth rates are below replacement levels. A smaller and smaller population will have to pay for social programs to support an aging population. The militaries are is serious decline, as money is diverted to prop up social programs. Labor unions in some countries can call general strikes that shut down the economy. It's hard to imagine a European Union-era Europe competing with North America and Asia.

The Airbus A380, OR, Oh! The Humanity!

Frank Martin looks at the new Airbus A380, the double-decker, Texas-sized airliner from Europe. He thinks it will be technically interesting, but ultimately a commercial failure, and includes it in a list of goverment-backed debacles that includes the Dornier DO-X, Bristol Brabazon, Saunders Roe Princess, Concorde, and the Space Shuttle.

To that list I'd add Cargolifter, an enormous dirigible largely funded by the German government with the goal of transporting cargo that couldn't be moved with winged aircraft. Cargolifter went bankrupt in 2002 before they had any commercial flights. Chris Range was telling me about them in the '90s. My reaction then was "a big German dirigible? What could possibly go wrong?"

"What is the European Union?"

Ragnar Arnason, economics professor at the University of Iceland, asks and answers the question. Via The Corner.

"What is the European Union? It's a customs union. It protects itself from outsiders with walls of tariffs. It is in many ways very reactionary. Those who control everything, the Central European states France, Germany, Spain and Italy, are not the countries of the free market and have never been. Those are countries which have cetralised their economy very much. Their economy is in many ways incomplete with much rigidity in the labour market. They have a very complex and wide-ranging system of subsidies and grants. State interference in the economy is vast. And in many ways the European Union is driven by dreams of past greatness; dreams of keeping Europe as a superpower. The result of all this is that growth in the EU is rather small compared to America and Asia."

Gas Taxes Around the World

How far can you go with $20 worth of gas and a car that gets 35 miles per gallon?

Germany: 127 miles
Japan: 147 miles
United States: 342 miles
China: 385 miles
Saudi Arabia: 771 miles
Venezuela: 4,624 miles

Via Marginal Revolutions. In possibly-related news, Germany's unemployment rate hit a new record of 12.6%. More gas prices here.

UPDATE: More bad economic news for Germany.

Europe, the Pacifist That Sells Arms

Thomas Friedman in the NY Times:

I am not part of the bash-China lobby. I believe that the U.S. needs to engage China, not isolate it, and work with it so that it takes its rightful place on the world stage. I believe China is largely a force for stability in Asia, not instability. But one reason for that is that the U.S. has countered any other impulses from Beijing by maintaining a stable balance of power among China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan - a balance that has helped the entire region prosper. The sale of advanced European weapons to China can only weaken that balance.

But what really concerns me is Europe. Europe's armies were designed for static defense against the Soviet Union. But the primary security challenges to Europe today come from the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. If you put all the E.U. armies together, they total around two million soldiers in uniform - almost the same size as the U.S. armed forces. But there is one huge difference - only about 5 percent of the European troops have the training, weaponry, logistical and intelligence support and airlift capability to fight a modern, hot war outside of Europe. (In the U.S. it is 70 percent in crucial units.) [...]

If Europe wants to go pacifist, that's fine. But there is nothing worse than a pacifist that sells arms - especially in a way that increases the burden on its U.S. ally and protector.

Europe: "I Love the '70s"

From The EU Observer:

The EU's current performance in terms of employment was achieved in the US in 1978 and it will take until 2023 for Europe to catch up, the report shows.

The situation is scarcely better when it comes to income per person. The US attained the current EU performance in 1985 and Europe is expected to close the gap in 2072.

But the bleakest picture comes when comparing the two economic blocs in terms of research and development. Europe is expected to catch up with the US in 2123 and then only if the EU outstrips America by 0.5 percent per year in terms of R&D investment.

Dutch May Vote Against EU Constitution

The Netherlands, one of the founding members of the EU, may vote against the new EU constitution. Via The Corner.

While international attention has been focused on the French referendum, just three days earlier on May 29, the Dutch are far more likely to slam on the brakes of the constitutional juggernaut. Polls in France still show a majority in favour of the constitution, but the Government in The Hague has been shocked to find that a majority of its citizens are opposed, and by no small margin.

A recent poll was telling. It showed that 42 per cent of Dutch would choose to vote "no", against 28 per cent who plan to vote "yes". The Netherlands is the only founding member of the EU in which opinion polls suggest that the constitution will be rejected.

Mark Steyn on European Demographics

His latest. "The hyper-rationalism of post-Christian Europe turns out to be wholly irrational: what's the point of creating a secular utopia if it's only for one generation?"

EU Relaxes Rules on Deficits

From The Economist:

Germany has breached the pact�s deficit criterion for three years running, and looks likely to do so again this year. Thanks in part to heavy lobbying by the German government, on Sunday Europe�s finance ministers agreed on revisions to the pact which render it effectively toothless. Hard-and-fast rules have been relaxed: now ministers are simply enjoined to keep deficits �close to the reference value�; and the criteria for determining when a country is in a severe economic downturn (in which case it is allowed to exceed the deficit limits) have been revised from the previous, strict standard�a 2% drop in GDP�to include any negative growth, or a protracted period of very low growth.

This will probably be portrayed in some quarters as a sign of the failure of the EU to live up to its original intentions, but deficit financing is an important tool for any government, and the new policy is probably more realistic than the old one.

New Poll Finds French Turning Against EU Constitution

A new survey finds a majority of French will vote no in a referendum to adopt the EU constitution.

Successive opinion polls have bolstered the 'no' campaign - the latest, released last week, showed 55 per cent of the French public were opposed to the constitution, against 40 per cent a month ago - and the government and mainstream Socialists have redoubled their efforts to win over the electorate. They have resorted to gimmicks such as a tour of Casino supermarkets by astronaut-turned-minister Claudie Haigner�, visits by foreign politicians and explanatory meetings for homeless people.

The French popular vote on the EU constitution is May 29. The Netherlands will have their referendum three days later. A March survey found Dutch opinion going against the EU constitution. That survey found a majority of the French still in favor of the EU constitution.

Mark Steyn's Prediction for European Immigration

His latest.

By 2010, a smart energetic Chinaman or Indian will be able to write his own ticket anywhere he wants. How attractive will the prospect of moving to the European Union and supporting a population of geriatric ingrate Continentals be? Not just compared with working in America or Australia but with the economic opportunities in his own country?

Here�s a prediction: Europe�s dependence on immigration will in the end prove far more catastrophic than America�s dependence on oil. The immigrants will run out long before the oil does. And the demographic disaster will be exacerbated by a continent-wide version of �white flight� � the abandonment of socially dysfunctional, economically moribund American cities in the Seventies by a frustrated middle class.

Bruce Bawer's "Hating America"

Bruce Bawer's Hating America. Bawer is an American who went to Europe assuming it was superior in every way to the US. Six years of living there has altered his viewpoint, and opened his eyes to persistent and illogical hatred of America. Here, he's discussing Jean-Fran�ois Revel�s L�obsession anti-am�ricaine, a primer on anti-Americanism in Europe.

Item by item, Revel refutes the European media�s picture of America. Poverty? An American at the poverty level has about the same standard of living as the average citizen of Greece or Portugal. (Indeed, according to a recent study by the Swedish Trade Research Institute, Swedes have a slightly lower standard of living than black Americans�a devastating statistic for Scandinavians, for whom both the unparalleled success of their own welfare economies and the pitiable poverty of blacks in the racist U.S. are articles of faith.)

I don't quote these dismal statistics on Europe for the sake of bashing Europe. I think it's terrible that so many Europeans are the victims of so many failed ideas - large-scale socialism, centrally-planned economies in general, de-population, pacifism, anti-Americanism, transnationalism. I cite the problems in Europe to argue that we shouldn't repeat their failed ideas unless we want to repeat their failures.

"The most audacious act of Gerrymanderying in history"

The Belmont Club on the creation of the European Union:

It was the most audacious act of Gerrymanderying in history. It provided the opportunity to sidestep the changing demographics in Western Europe by redefinition. Long after Frenchmen were a minority in France they could still belong to an ethnic European majority, providing Europe extended to the Dnieper. Instead of mending the hole in the hull, the problem could be ameloriated by making the ship bigger so that it would take longer to sink."

Poll: One Third of Dutch Want to Emigrate

From Expatica:

AMSTERDAM � A survey has indicated that 32 percent of Dutch people want to emigrate abroad and that just 51 percent are proud of the Netherlands.

The survey by Amsterdam-based research bureau Signicom also found that 33 percent of Dutch nationals think that China will have greater power than the US and Europe combined in 10 years time.

The sample size was only 443 people, so I don't know how significant this is, but it's not a good sign for the Netherlands. Netherlands - with ultra-liberal laws on drugs, prostitution and euthenasia - has been an icon to American liberals, but their system appears more and more to be unsustainable. Like Mark Steyn said, "What's the point of creating a secular utopia if it's only for one generation?"

European Economies Not Doing Well Compared to US

Bruce Bawer in the NY Times, via VodkaPundit.

All this was illuminated last year in a study by a Swedish research organization, Timbro, which compared the gross domestic products of the 15 European Union members (before the 2004 expansion) with those of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia. (Norway, not being a member of the union, was not included.)

After adjusting the figures for the different purchasing powers of the dollar and euro, the only European country whose economic output per person was greater than the United States average was the tiny tax haven of Luxembourg, which ranked third, just behind Delaware and slightly ahead of Connecticut.

The next European country on the list was Ireland, down at 41st place out of 66; Sweden was 14th from the bottom (after Alabama), followed by Oklahoma, and then Britain, France, Finland, Germany and Italy. The bottom three spots on the list went to Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Alternatively, the study found, if the E.U. was treated as a single American state, it would rank fifth from the bottom, topping only Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi.

As always, thank goodness for Mississippi.

Sweden as a Bellwether for the Welfare State

Johan Norberg recounts Sweden's economic history and comes to this conclusion:

In 1934 the two Swedish social democratic ideologues Gunnar and Alva Myrdal explained that there were extremely beneficial conditions for a welfare state in Sweden - considering our wealth, the homogenous population, the protestant work ethic and the good education. If the welfare state didn't work here, it couldn�t work anywhere in the world, they thought. The rest of the world should seriously ponder the fact that the Myrdals were right in that prediction.

How Many Hours of Work to Buy a TV?

From one of the new stats at NationMaster.

1. Belgium 68 hours
2. Australia 50 hours
3. Italy 44 hours
4. Austria 42 hours
5. Germany 32 hours
6. Ireland 32 hours
7. United Kingdom 28 hours
8. Switzerland 22 hours
9. France 22 hours
10. Norway 22 hours
11. New Zealand 20 hours
12. Finland 20 hours
13. United States 15 hours
14. Japan 15 hours
15. Denmark 13 hours

Other new stats:

- Prisoners per capita - US is highest
- Cannabis use - New Zealand is highest
- Teenge pregnancy - US is highest
- Church attendance - Nigeria is highest

European Countries to Exceed Kyoto's CO2 Emission Standards

Via Marginal Revolutions.

Netherlands 10% over
Belgium 16% over
France 19% over
Italy 13 to 21% over
Finland 26% over
Luxembourg 31% over
Ireland 41% over
Greece 51% over
Spain 61% over
Portugal 77% over

Not all the European countries are over their limits, but quite a few are, despite faltering economies. What's more, even if Kyoto was fully enacted it would only slow global warming, not stop it. And the ssumption underlying Kyoto is that global warming is ongoing, has net negative consequences, and is caused by CO2. (More assumptions here.) It's really hard to see how Kyoto can go on.

French Voters Reject EU Constitution

InstaPundit has roundups here, here, and here.

Dutch Vote on EU Consitution

Huge defeat for the EU constitution in the Netherlands.

Swiss Voters Approve Schengen and Dublin Agreements

From The Washington Times via Smoke My Gun, who notes that the EU's Firearms Directive could spell the end of Switzerland's long-standing tradition of firearms ownership.

"The End of Europe"

Robert Samuelson's op-ed The End of Europe neatly sums up the major problems Europe faces: an aging population, deathbed birthrates, excess immigration, high unemployment, burdensome taxes, and unsustainable employment and retirement benefits. Via Insty.

Critique of Rifkin's "The European Dream"

James Bennett reviews Jeremy Rifkin's The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream.

Rifkin's book is a strange duck. It initially seems to offer a conventional example of the second Europeanist position. And in fact, it does include the standard Euro-critiques of the American socio-economic approach: prisons, McJobs, consumerism and so on. As usual, these arguments are used to fill in the argumentative gaps created by the shortcomings of actual, existing Europe, as opposed to the theoretically ever-more-efficient Europe beloved of the Wall Street Journal and the Economist.

Layered underneath these fairly standard approaches, however, is a deeper and more philosophical level of argument than Europeanists usually present. Rifkin argues that the European approach (The European Dream of his title) is precisely the abnegation of traditional progressivism in its most fundamental sense: the belief in the desirability of material and scientific progress, and the individual identity and freedom that accompany it. Thus, Rifkin's is a two-level critique of America contrasted with virtuous Europe. First, he asserts that Europe is surpassing America on the conventional criteria of prosperity. But he then adds that where economic success is absent in Europe, that's okay too, because progress is bad for you anyway.

[...]

At this point one must turn to the underlying level of Rifkin's critique, that of the entire complex of ideas of autonomous individuals with enforceable constitutional rights. In essence, Rifkin is saying "Okay, perhaps United Europe will after all be poor and strife-ridden. But at least you will lose your freedom and individualism in the bargain."

Imagine There's No Benefit Concert / It's Easy if You Try

With Live8 in the news, Colby Cosh points to the John Lennon Playboy interview and Lennon's thoughts on charity benefit concerts.

PLAYBOY: Just to finish your favorite subject, what about the suggestion that the four of you put aside your personal feelings and regroup to give a mammoth concert for charity, some sort of giant benefit?

LENNON: I don't want to have anything to do with benefits. I have been benefited to death.

PLAYBOY: Why?

LENNON: Because they're always rip-offs. I haven't performed for personal gain since 1966, when the Beatles last performed. Every concert since then, Yoko and I did for specific charities, except for a Toronto thing that was a rock-'n'-roll revival. Every one of them was a mess or a rip-off. So now we give money to who we want. You've heard of tithing?

PLAYBOY: That's when you give away a fixed percentage of your income.

LENNON: Right. I am just going to do it privately. I am not going to get locked into that business of saving the world on stage. The show is always a mess and the artist always comes off badly.

PLAYBOY: What about the Bangladesh concert, in which George and other people such as Dylan performed?

LENNON: Bangladesh was caca.

PLAYBOY: You mean because of all the questions that were raised about where the money went?

LENNON: Yeah, right. I can't even talk about it, because it's still a problem. You'll have to check with Mother [Yoko], because she knows the ins and outs of it, I don't. But it's all a rip-off. So forget about it. All of you who are reading this, don't bother sending me all that garbage about, "Just come and save the Indians, come and save the blacks, come and save the war veterans," Anybody I want to save will be helped through our tithing, which is ten percent of whatever we earn.

PLAYBOY: But that doesn't compare with what one promoter, Sid Bernstein, said you could raise by giving a world-wide televised concert -- playing separately, as individuals, or together, as the Beatles. He estimated you could raise over $200,000,000 in one day.

LENNON: That was a commercial for Sid Bernstein written with Jewish schmaltz and showbiz and tears, dropping on one knee. It was Al Jolson. OK. So I don't buy that. OK.

PLAYBOY: But the fact is, $200,000,000 to a poverty-stricken country in South America----

LENNON: Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn't mean a damn thing. After they've eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what?

Lennon isn't the only one who feels that way about the monetary output of benefit concerts. Bob Geldof says that Live8 is to raise awareness, not money, in a concession to the fact that Africa is a bottomless pit for aid money, and the original Live Aid money didn't do what it was supposed to. The only thing likely to help Africa now is radical new ideas like constitutional democracy, accountable government, and free market capitalism. Luckily, Geldof seems to realize that.

Here's the clincher: Geldof wasn't asking for donations. He admits that food aid and even debt cancellation, while helpful, are of limited utility in the long run. Instead, he's asking us to start a converstation about how to stimulate long-term development in Sub-Saharan Africa. "This isn�t Live Aid 2," the website reads, "LIVE 8 is about justice not charity."

And I had to love this:

12:33 - Todd Zwicki wants to know about the concept of "trade justice". Geldof: The EU is a protection racket that Al Capone would love. The trade cartels exist to protect domestic production ...

If first-world countries - the US included - dropped agricultural subsidies for their own farmers, third-world farmers would be able to compete in first-world markets thanks to their lower labor costs. If poor countries can't even make money with agriculture it's hard to imagine how they'll ever bootstrap themselves into prosperity.

Green Party Losing Elections in Germany

The Greens are Wilting:

Yet a boom in wind and garbage may matter little in the face of a broad cultural shift. If Cologne University sociologist and Greens expert Markus Klein is right, Germany is in the grip of a "values rollback," away from the post-materialist values of the comfortable 1970s and '80s�including concern for the environment and minority rights�to a more conservative emphasis on achievement, responsibility, family, career and, to a small extent, even religion. Young Germans who grew up in the economically insecure 1990s, he says, worry about jobs and education, not the second-tier issues with which the Greens are identified. Already, says Klein, Green voters are concentrated in the 40-to-49 age bracket, while young voters are increasingly flocking to conservative and liberal-democratic parties. "The Greens are a one-generation project," says Klein. "Their core voters will just die out."

Mark Steyn on Europe's Attempts to Linger Awhile

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
�Linger awhile! so fair thou art!�
Then mayst thou fetter me straightway
Then to the abyss will I depart!

Most of us bandy the term �Faustian� fairly loosely � I do myself in this week�s Star Wars review. But Goethe�s version of the actual bet is much more particular than it�s generally summarised as: when Mephistopheles shows up, he promises he�ll do anything Faust wants of him. But if Faust ever becomes so content, so happy with �the moment� that he wants time to linger awhile � that he wants to live in that moment for ever � then he will depart to the abyss and the devil will have his soul for all eternity. [...]

So �Europhiles� say to the moment, �Linger awhile! so fair thou art!� That�s what the European constitution boils down to � an attempt to freeze the moment, to make time stand still in a permanent EUtopia so fair it should be constitutionally required to linger eternally.

This next paragraph from Steyn dovetails with these comments regarding Jeremy Rifkin's The European Dream. Europeans and Americans have very different ideas about the relationship of the individual to society.

But, having brandished his credentials, Hutton says that it�s his �affection for the best of America that makes me so angry that it has fallen so far from the standards it expects of itself�. Many Americans of Left and Right could write a book like that but, as things transpire, the great Euro-thinker is not arguing that America is betraying the Founding Fathers, but that the Founding Fathers themselves got it hopelessly wrong. This becomes explicit when 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�.

Go Read Jeff Jarvis

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.

More on the Death of Multiculturalism

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.

"Let's face facts, Europe's being run by cowards"

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.

Germany's Economic Turnaround

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.

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.

Mark Steyn on European Welfare and Demographics

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.

Highly Recommended Article on Europe's Economic Future

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.

Sweden's Suicide Note?

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.

Record German Emigration

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.

Germany's Church Tax

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.

European Vacation Benefits

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.