5 Myths About Sick Old Europe

It's important to recall that all you people who rant about how Europe is socialist [that's an overgeneralization] and how socialism never words are a bit out of touch with reality.

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100501041.html

1. The sclerotic European economy is incapable of leading the world.

Who're you calling sclerotic? The European Union's $16 trillion economy has been quietly surging for some time and has emerged as the largest trading bloc in the world, producing nearly a third of the global economy. That's more than the U.S. economy (27 percent) or Japan's (9 percent). Despite all the hype, China is still an economic dwarf, accounting for less than 6 percent of the world's economy. India is smaller still.

The European economy was never as bad as the Europessimists made it out to be. From 2000 to 2005, when the much-heralded U.S. economic recovery was being fueled by easy credit and a speculative housing market, the 15 core nations of the European Union had per capita economic growth rates equal to that of the United States. In late 2006, they surpassed us. Europe added jobs at a faster rate, had a much lower budget deficit than the United States and is now posting higher productivity gains and a $3 billion trade surplus.

2. Nobody wants to invest in European companies and economies because lack of competitiveness makes them a poor bet.

Wrong again. Between 2000 and 2005, foreign direct investment in the E.U. 15 was almost half the global total, and investment returns in Europe outperformed those in the United States. "Old Europe is an investment magnet because it is the most lucrative market in the world in which to operate," says Dan O'Brien of the Economist. In fact, corporate America is a huge investor in Europe; U.S. companies' affiliates in the E.U. 15 showed profits of $85 billion in 2005, far more than in any other region of the world and 26 times more than the $3.3 billion they made in China.

And forget that old canard about economic competitiveness. According to the World Economic Forum's measure of national competitiveness, European countries took the top four spots, seven of the top 10 spots and 12 of the top 20 spots in 2006-07. The United States ranked sixth. India ranked 43rd and mainland China 54th.

3. Europe is the land of double-digit unemployment.

Not anymore. Half of the E.U. 15 nations have experienced effective full employment during this decade, and unemployment rates have been the same as or lower than the rate in the United States. Unemployment for the entire European Union, including the still-emerging nations of Central and Eastern Europe, stands at a historic low of 6.7 percent. Even France, at 8 percent, is at its lowest rate in 25 years.

That's still higher than U.S. unemployment, which is 4.6 percent, but let's not forget that many of the jobs created here pay low wages and include no benefits. In Europe, the jobless still have access to health care, generous replacement wages, job-retraining programs, housing subsidies and other benefits. In the United States, by contrast, the unemployed can end up destitute and marginalized.

4. The European "welfare state" hamstrings businesses and hurts the economy.

Beware of stereotypes based on ideological assumptions. As Europe's economy has surged, it has maintained fairness and equality. Unlike in the United States, with its rampant inequality and lack of universal access to affordable health care and higher education, Europeans have harnessed their economic engine to create wealth that is broadly distributed.

Europeans still enjoy universal cradle-to-grave social benefits in many areas. They get quality health care, paid parental leave, affordable childcare, paid sick leave, free or nearly free higher education, generous retirement pensions and quality mass transit. They have an average of five weeks of paid vacation (compared with two for Americans) and a shorter work week. In some European countries, workers put in one full day less per week than Americans do, yet enjoy the same standard of living.

Europe is more of a "workfare state" than a welfare state. As one British political analyst said to me recently: "Europe doesn't so much have a welfare society as a comprehensive system of institutions geared toward keeping everyone healthy and working." Properly understood, Europe's economy and social system are two halves of a well-designed "social capitalism" -- an ingenious framework in which the economy finances the social system to support families and employees in an age of globalized capitalism that threatens to turn us all into internationally disposable workers. Europeans' social system contributes to their prosperity, rather than detracting from it, and even the continent's conservative political leaders agree that it is the best way.

5. Europe is likely to be held hostage to its dependence on Russia and the Middle East for most of its energy needs.

Crystal-ball gazing on this front is risky. Europe may rely on energy from Russia and the Middle East for some time, but it is also leading the world in reducing its energy dependence and in taking action to counteract global climate change. In March, the heads of all 27 E.U. nations agreed to make renewable energy sources 20 percent of the union's energy mix by 2020 and to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent.

In pursuit of these goals, the continent's landscape is slowly being transformed by high-tech windmills, massive solar arrays, tidal power stations, hydrogen fuel cells and energy-saving "green" buildings. Europe has gone high- and low-tech: It's developing not only mass public transit and fuel-efficient vehicles but also thousands of kilometers of bicycle and pedestrian paths to be used by people of all ages. Europe's ecological "footprint," the amount of the Earth's capacity that a population consumes, is about half that of the United States.

So much for the sick old man.

At the end of the day, they've got a point - the American economy is becoming a hall of mirrors - pushing high corporate profits and low unemployment while the actual jobs being created are at the cashier level, not the engineer/accountant/other skilled labor level and people's median salaries are actually going down. We have piles of uninsured and/or uneducated people, and it's not helping us either.

America only gets 2 paid holidays? And Paid Sick Days is so noteworthy it gets a mention alongside free tertiary education?

What are American trade unions even doing?

Quote:

At the end of the day, they've got a point - the American economy is becoming a hall of mirrors - pushing high corporate profits and low unemployment while the actual jobs being created are at the cashier level, not the engineer/accountant/other skilled labor level and people's median salaries are actually going down. We have piles of uninsured and/or uneducated people, and it's not helping us either.

How about some figures? I'm not inclined to believe any of that is true.

So basically we are to treat Europe not as their respective individual countries, but as just the EU from this point on? While I'm not one to have made the kind of claims against europe as described in the article but at the same time when you group all those European countries together as a whole under the banner of the EU and base the statistics off that I'm a little wary that some of the small details are being left out.

Because no doubt countries like France or Germany are probably economically well off and probably some of the main drivers for the EU's growth numbers, what about some of those newly inducted old Eastern bloc countries? How are they doing?

Originally Posted by RABicle

America only gets 2 paid holidays? And Paid Sick Days is so noteworthy it gets a mention alongside free tertiary education?

What are American trade unions even doing?

I think it was mentioning most Americans start at two weeks of paid vacation. Most, however, should have a bit more as every company I've ever worked at lets you accrue more for every year you work there. I wonder if the EU one was taken for the starting benefits or as an "average worker" statistic.

This article is so slanted that it's basically completely unreliable for the sake of argument.

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

I think it was mentioning most Americans start at two weeks of paid vacation. Most, however, should have a bit more as every company I've ever worked at lets you accrue more for every year you work there. I wonder if the EU one was taken for the starting benefits or as an "average worker" statistic.

Most companies I've ever worked for give you one week vacation, one week sick. That's it.

The accruing of time I have only ever seen at the start of a new job - you don't start with anything; you need to earn it.

The Europeans I deal with and am related to get a hell of a lot more vacation time and sick time than any American I know. They take holidays at least once a month, and sometimes shut down completely for a week in the summer. Each employee seems to get maybe 4 weeks vacation a year at a minimum.

(That's based on what I know on Germany and France, and I don't necessarily agree with it.)

How about you try and attack the content not the 'slant', NP? If it's so biased it should be easy to refute.

I got 30 days paid vacation a year, and can bank upto 90 days before I have to take any of it. I also get national holidays off, full medical coverage (as in, I never pay a cent whether it is dental, medical, optometry, etc.). I got this from the day I started.

Oh, but, then again, I technically don't even own my own body, anymore.

Originally Posted by Arainach

How about you try and attack the content not the 'slant', NP? If it's so biased it should be easy to refute.

Well there's the slant, and the fact that I don't see many sources cited other than the article writer spoke to a certain someone here and there.

Sounds like conjecture and propoganda at face value.

Personally, I don't regard 'socialist' as a curse word, although it is factually inaccurate with reference to the EU (overgeneralisation). The Oxford Dictionary '(7th edition) defines socialism as: 'a set of political and economic theories based on the belief that everyone has an equal right to a share of a country’s wealth and that the government should own and control the main industries'. In most European countries, the government does in fact not 'own and control the main industries'.

So the debate is really about whether the European system is more social (not socialist) than the U.S. American one, a question which I think is difficult to answer, since the EU consists of many diverse countries.
(And yes, the article cited here does contain a lack of references -although it includes several figures- but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is factually inaccurate. Neither can we say that it is 'true', though, since no one can ever capture all the potential perspectives on a given topic.)

I'm going to pass any attempt to defend the European economy in general, since, to be honest, I don't know enough about recent statistics to comment on it, although I would ask you to bear in mind the emergence of Ireland as a strong economic power after they joined the EU.

Everyone will differ on this topic. From my point of view, which is admittedly the point of view of a college student with a middle class background, who has made very negative experiences with the German medical system, a state with benefits that has troubles to maintain this standard and is in debt, is still preferrable to a state with fewer benefits.

It is true that Germany, for instance, has a more extensive system of support for the unemployed than the U.S. system does (Payne 2005; Marsh et al. 2006). At the same time, this system is widely contested and is getting reformed all the time due to substantial errors. How much money do people need to live an 'acceptable' life? What is considered 'acceptable' and who defines it? Does a group of politicians, who are in no financial troubles themselves, really have the right to tell another person how much money they can spend on such basic things as heating? And who is supposed to finance the benefits? These are all big issues, which shouldn't be underestimated.

So yes, there are several 'welfare states' in the EU, which I, personally, think is a great thing, but you would be turning your eyes away from reality if you idealise that. There are problems which go with it as well.

We need to be vigilant against jumping to conclusions from a few numbers and figures. These are always highly dependent on the method used to assess a given topic, and the people using them, the counting systems, etc. (Marsh 2006). For example, unemployment rates in Germany have sunk to 8.7% (October 2007) since the change of government in Germany (just as a comparison: they were at 10.5% in September 2005). This is of course a positive thing, but at the same time, there has been a change in the employment offered, with a decrease in employee protection and an increase in so-called '1-Euro-jobs', which only lower the numbers of unemployment by getting people a job for a few weeks at most with extremely low pay. At the same time, there has been a change in the definition of who can apply for unemployment money from the government. So we can't simply say 'there are fewer unemployed people out there', since this may not be true, and certainly depends on our own definition of the word 'unemployed'.

Another example would be the medical system. While I think it is good that there is a general state insurance system in Germany, so everyone is entitled to medical services, the increasing differences between benefits provided for people with private insurance and people with government insurance also make it a very unfair system, a system which reinforces social stratification. Therefore, it may seem easy to prefer the British system with the NHS (National Health Service) for everyone, which is paid for through taxes and government-funded. On the other hand, this also has its downsides: People have to wait for a long time to get surgery, there is an increasing amount of dentists who go private and don't accept NHS patients anymore (Metro 2007), etc.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think things are that simple. It depends on your point of view which system seems preferable. To me, it is clearly a more social economy, although I think it is a highly idealised perspective to say that there isn't as much social injustice in Europe - there is. Only its manifestations are different.

Sources: Hornby, A.S. (2004) Oxford Advanced Learners' Dictionary,
7th edition
Marsh, I. et al. (2006) Sociology: Making Sense of Society , 3rd edition
Payne (2005) Social Divisions
Deutsches Arbeitsamt (German Employment Agency): http://www.pub.arbeitsamt.de/hst/ser...at/aktuell.pdf
Metro, October 2007 (sorry, forgot the exact date)

I think that article is more about promoting European nationalism at the expense of United States. It's not a secret that the American economy is preforming lousy, and the European economy/currency look like better investments.

Keeping that in mind, point number five is the easiest to refute.

Originally Posted by Article

Europe's ecological "footprint," the amount of the Earth's capacity that a population consumes, is about half that of the United States.

So what? This doesn't mean that Europe is better off. This means that if Americans adopted the ecological footprint of a average European overnight, the US would be able to export oil. This also might mean that Americans have a greater potential for increases in efficiency that would not negatively effect the standard of living.

Originally Posted by Article

Europe may rely on energy from Russia and the Middle East for some time, but it is also leading the world in reducing its energy dependence and in taking action to counteract global climate change.

Reducing it's oil dependency is all well and good, but Europe is still held hostage by Russia and the Middle East.

Might explain why American relations with France and Germany are getting warmer.... especially over Iraq/Iran.

Originally Posted by Article

In March, the heads of all 27 E.U. nations agreed to make renewable energy sources 20 percent of the union's energy mix by 2020 and to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent.

They can pledge all they want. France is still the only country to meet it's Kyoto treaty goal in emission reductions. Isn't it a little early to start making new pledges if the old ones can't be met?

Lol care to source that last statement Watts? 20% of Denmarks energy is ALREADY from wind power. They're already at the 2020 mark. Sauce

Originally Posted by RABicle

Lol care to source that last statement Watts? 20% of Denmarks energy is ALREADY from wind power. They're already at the 2020 mark. Sauce

I take it back.

When Germany (being the largest polluter state of the EU, as opposed to say Denmark) exempts it's coal industry from CO2 emission standards anything is possible. Coal doesn't cause carbon to be released into the atmosphere anyway right?

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/bu...s/29green.html

Let's discount the oil industry as well. Then the United States will have met it's Kyoto goals without even signing the treaty! Hooray!

In Europe:

*You can walk down the street with a beer in your hand and a cop won't give you shit about it or tell you to pour it out.

*You aren't thrown in the slammer for having a tiny bit of Cannabis on you.

*Whore houses are readily available

*They aren't as pretentious about alcohol consumption

*Nudity isn't considering disgusting and it is celebrated tastefully through art.

*People don't shove patriotism down your throat.

*Maternity leave is decent, while in America it is the worst in the Western world.

*Public Transportation is readily available


Social freedom in America is a mere illusion and I know that for a fact since I've been living in Europe for 3 months (roughly).

And where have you been living in Europe, exactly, that makes you think your personal experience is indicative of an entire continent?

Originally Posted by Jeffro

In Europe:

*You can walk down the street with a beer in your hand and a cop won't give you shit about it or tell you to pour it out.

*You aren't thrown in the slammer for having a tiny bit of Cannabis on you.

*Whore houses are readily available

*They aren't as pretentious about alcohol consumption

*Nudity isn't considering disgusting and it is celebrated tastefully through art.

*People don't shove patriotism down your throat.

*Maternity leave is decent, while in America it is the worst in the Western world.

*Public Transportation is readily available

I heard it rains chocolate in Europe as well...

No, sorry, but as right as some of these things may be for some of the countries, your statement is an overgeneralisation. Cannabis and prostitution laws, for example, vary from country to country, and although it is legal to drink alcohol in public, you may still face prejudiced interrogations from the police if you do so.

You are right about maternity leave, though, which was even admitted by a 2004 edition of Newsweek (I forgot which one it was, though, sorry).

As for patriotism - I wouldn't say it is less existent in Europe, it is just expressed in a different way for historical reasons.

I don't know too much about the legality of nudity in Europe (except th