The Tortoise And The Hare
By way of the Atlantic Review, we have this article in the Globalist, which offers the solution to Europe's market woes. And it's not "be like America." By balancing government spending, taking advantage of cheap-but-highly-skilled Eastern European labor, and controlled deregulation, Europe can defeat the stark predictions made in the OECD survey on economic policy.
I find some facets of the report itself hard to swallow. Presumptions on personal wealth and GDP are made from a decidedly American point of view, and linking their decline to a general "decline and fall of Europe," as Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria does, shows a general ignorance of European economic policy. There's a prevailing image of the European market being a bunch of old men smoking cigars and going home at 3:00 while they are being outmoded by Koreans delivering pizzas on their bikes. As if Europe has some catching up to do with America in the global market. It's okay, it's happening more surely than you think -- the EU just isn't willing to invade countries and grandstand against its allies to stimulate growth. Is that the real problem?
Plus, I challenge anyone to prove to me that we will see the average income go up for the US, because I am just not seeing that. It'll suffer far worse than the EU will in the face of outsourcing and labor disputes (or lack thereof), and I want to see that.
It's also argued that the restrictive lending and fiduciary concern in Europe is actually an asset, citing the now-bursting real estate bubble. Sufficiently persuasive: but, as Hutchinson notes, EU policy-makers are unfortunately not heading in this direction.
Comments
Wait, you WANT to see American wages go down? Why? I don't. Yeah, I read the survey, too. It's interesting, but we economists are a pretty clueless population -- sorry about the stereotype, but what passes for economics is so often the myopic drivel of those who couldn't hack it in the real arts and sciences, isn't it? I mean, we've all said for decades now that the standard of living in the US is higher than that of the Europeans, always based on comparisons of factory workers' wages and currency exchange and other meaninglessness. What about the huge number of dirt poor people in America, murders, per capita child abuse cases, American wage-slavery on the one hand, and then on the other hand you have millions of European dead in the World Wars and holocaust. Do these topics factor into a discussion of living standard, or are they too big, too historic, and therefore too unfathomable? So, we go back to counting our beans, eating, screwing, and listening to music.
Sam; March 8, 2006 2:33 AM
The old smokin' Europeans vs. the Korean pizza-delivery kids -- that's a good line.
Sam; March 8, 2006 2:39 AM