After America полностью

It’s interesting that it never occurred to the IMF that anyone would be loopy enough to try their study the other way around—to examine the impact on America of Europeanization. For that, we had to wait for the election of Barack Obama. You’ve probably heard liberal academics on NPR and the like drooling about “the European model,” and carelessly assumed they were referring to Carla Bruni. If only. Under the European model, state spending accounts for roughly 50 percent of GDP.³⁹ Under the Swedish model, which isn’t half as much fun as it sounds, state spending accounts for 54 percent of GDP. In the United States, it’s already over 40 percent. Ten years ago, it was 34 percent. So we’re trending very Swede-like. And why stop there? In Wales, government spending accounts for just under 72 percent of the economy.⁴⁰ Fortunately for what’s left of America’s private sector, “the Welsh model” doesn’t have quite the same beguiling ring as “the Swedish model.” But, even so, if Scandinavia really is the natural condition of an advanced democracy, then we’re all doomed.

That was the general thesis of America Alone—that the jig is up for much if not most of the western world. “Alarmist,” pronounced The Economist,⁴¹ reflecting the general consensus of polite society in both Europe and North America. Polite society has spent the years since playing catch-up.

So if you don’t want your fin de civilisation analysis from a frothing right-wing loon you can now get it from the house-trained chaps at the New York Times: “Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism… ‘The Europe that protects’ is a slogan of the European Union.”⁴²

Protects from what? Right now, Europe mostly needs protection from itself and its worst inclinations: “With low growth, low birth rates and longer life expectancies, Europe can no longer afford its comfortable lifestyle.”

Even in its heyday—the Sixties and Seventies—the good times in Europe were underwritten by the American security guarantee: the only reason why France could get away with being France, Belgium with being Belgium, Sweden with being Sweden is because America was America. For over sixty years America has paid for Europe’s defense. And because the United States Army lives in Germany, that frees up Germany to spend its defense budget on government health care and all the rest. In essence, American taxpayers pay for German entitlements.

And it still isn’t enough.

So the world has deemed Greece “too big to fail,” even though in (what’s the word?) reality it’s too big not to fail. And the rest of us are too big not to follow in its path: “Another reform high on the list is removing the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors like health care, transportation and energy and allowing private investment,” reported the New York Times. “Economists say that the liberalization of trucking routes—where a trucking license can cost up to $90,000—and the health care industry would help bring down prices in these areas, which are among the highest in Europe.”⁴³

Removing the state from health care brings down prices? Who knew?

This New York Times is presumably unrelated to the New York Times that spent the previous year arguing for the U.S. government’s annexation of health care as a means of controlling costs. And entirely unrelated to the New York Times whose Nobel Prize-winning economics guru, Paul Krugman, pronounced Europe “the Comeback Continent” in 2008.⁴⁴

About half the global economy is living beyond not only its means but its diminished number of children’s means. Instead of addressing that fact, countries with government debt of 125 percent of GDP are being “rescued” by countries with government debt of 80 percent of GDP. Good luck with that.

The day after the 2010 election, I found myself sharing a stage with Howard Dean, former Governor of Vermont and head of the Democratic National Committee.45 Governor Dean mused that the European Union was one of the most interesting experiments in government ever attempted.