George Adair of EU Rota examines the foreign direct investment figures for the EU and the US and finds that those terrible “Anglo-Saxons” and their liberal market economics are doing better than the “social market” quasi-socialism of the rest of Europe. He also provides more interesting statistics about Europe’s moribund economy.
The welfare state doesn’t work. It systematically and inexorably saps the very things that lift people out of poverty. Europe’s social welfare model is trending further and further towards collapse. It isn’t remotely sustainable, and as the European population continues to decline, the situation grows worse and worse. Those countries like Ireland and Estonia who have embrace liberal market economics — open markets, low taxes, and other pro-growth policies, are doing very well. The UK, which still has its problems with overbearing government, maintained many of Lady Thatcher’s reforms, and is the strongest economy in Europe. Meanwhile, the “social model” countries face massive unemployment, moribund economic growth, and the perfect storm of rising demand on their welfare systems coupled with a decreasing population of workers.
The problem with the “social model” is that it isn’t based on pragmatism. It’s a utopian worldview. It isn’t policy, it’s religion. It’s the new religious orthodoxy of Europe, with plenty of converts elsewhere as well. It doesn’t matter how well it actually does, the whole point is making people feel good about themselves. Those who stray from the orthodoxy are treated as heretics.
The problem with utopian ideologies is that they don’t care about the real world. They’re entirely self-justifying, which is why despite the rising mountain of evidence that shows classical-liberal societies booming and welfare states failing, the people are so inured into their idée fixé that they very notion of reform is unthinkable. A society with such an attitude tends not to last long, and the idea of the European welfare state is so set in the minds of the European electorate and intelligentsia that only a few seem to notice it’s looming collapse.
Nice typo in the third paragraph – or was it intended to read “uropian worldview”?
Your evaluation of the European intelligentsia’s ability to see some kind of impeding collapse is not right, however. There is a strong sense at every level of society (at least in Germany there is) that major changes are imminent. And those changes are not perceived to be for the better. There is a general sense of doom among many people. You will appreciate the irony of the fact that it is precisely because of this that great numbers of people cling to and even return to the welfare state idea: “since we are going downhill, we look to society to offer support in the hard times to come; and since the government is the steward of society (in a manner of speaking, as in the Steward of Gondor), we lay our trust in them.”
J
Maybe “Uropian” should be intentional… I like that coinage. Spread that meme!
“Uropian” – A reference to the fundamentalist social-democratism that plagues continental Europe, the state of Massachusetts, Jaques Derrida fans, readers of The Nation, and Michael Moore. Annoying, though seldom fatal. Curable through large doses of AngloSaxiclon-D and a few solid whacks on the head with a five iron.