By Samuel Gregg
In recent years, American liberals' love-affair with all things contemporary Western European (sans Margaret Thatcher and Benedict XVI) has acquired an increasingly desperate edge. As evidence for the European social model's severe dysfunctionality continues to mount before our eyes, the American left is acutely aware how much it discredits its decades-old effort to take America down the same economic path. Hence, the ever-more screechy insistence that Europe's existing mess is due to specific, even one-off factors.
Exhibit A in this regard is the New York Times' Paul Krugman. In his latest missive on this topic, "What Ails Europe?" our Nobel Laureate informs us that European welfare states aren't central to the problem. Sweden, he points out, is doing well, despite the fact it has a large welfare state. Instead, Krugman maintains, what truly plagues Europe is a money problem.
Putting aside the fact that Sweden has actually implemented significant welfare reforms and economic liberalization policies since the 1990s, Europe does indeed face huge monetary challenges. Having a common currency while permitting euro-members to violate mutually-agreed debt limits was always a recipe for disaster. Greece could happily splurge on adding tens of thousands of public sector workers to the government's payroll and financing Chicago-esque patronage politics, while Portugal built dozens of now-idle, often half-finished soccer stadiums.
Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/03/02/the-american-lefts-european-ni
In recent years, American liberals' love-affair with all things contemporary Western European (sans Margaret Thatcher and Benedict XVI) has acquired an increasingly desperate edge. As evidence for the European social model's severe dysfunctionality continues to mount before our eyes, the American left is acutely aware how much it discredits its decades-old effort to take America down the same economic path. Hence, the ever-more screechy insistence that Europe's existing mess is due to specific, even one-off factors.
Exhibit A in this regard is the New York Times' Paul Krugman. In his latest missive on this topic, "What Ails Europe?" our Nobel Laureate informs us that European welfare states aren't central to the problem. Sweden, he points out, is doing well, despite the fact it has a large welfare state. Instead, Krugman maintains, what truly plagues Europe is a money problem.
Putting aside the fact that Sweden has actually implemented significant welfare reforms and economic liberalization policies since the 1990s, Europe does indeed face huge monetary challenges. Having a common currency while permitting euro-members to violate mutually-agreed debt limits was always a recipe for disaster. Greece could happily splurge on adding tens of thousands of public sector workers to the government's payroll and financing Chicago-esque patronage politics, while Portugal built dozens of now-idle, often half-finished soccer stadiums.
Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/03/02/the-american-lefts-european-ni
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