Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Paul Krugman, in "Can Europe Be Saved?," his cover story in today's New York Times Magazine, makes a number of assertions on which I feel the itch to comment. Care to indulge me--and then offer a few comments of your own?
Krugman: "The Europeans have shown us that peace and unity can be brought to a region with a history of violence."
Me: What the Europeans have shown us is that the United States can bring peace and unity to their region. From the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild the economies of Western Europe, to the Truman Doctrine, which provided military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey, to--well, to the 50,000 troops we maintain in Germany to this very day. The Europeans? Teach us about peace? The assertion is just profoundly ignorant.
Krugman: [I]n the process they have created perhaps the most decent societies in human history, combining democracy and human rights with a level of individual economic security that America comes nowhere close to matching.
Me: Where to begin? Well, let's just consider the economic point and let it go at that. The European economies have, for more than a quarter of a century now, grown, on average, much more slowly than that of the United States. One result? Chronic unemployment, particularly among young people and ethnic minorities. Perhaps a Ricochet reader can confirm this for me, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that the unemployment rate for French citizens under the age of 25 has remained above 10 percent for two decades now. Do those unemployed young French collect generous welfare payments? Indeed they do. But where would you rather live? Where would they rather live? Again, perhaps a Ricochetian can locate the precise figures, but the number of young Frenchmen in line to emigrate to the United States exceeds by some large amount the number of young Americans attempting to emigrate to France.
Krugman: In the 1980s and '90s...Europe set about removing many of the remaining obstacles to full economice integration....Borders were opened; freedom of personal movement was guaranteed; and product, safety and food regulations were harmonized, a process immortalized by the Eurosausage episode of the TV show "Yes Minister," in which the minister in question it told that under the new European rules, the traditional British sausage no longer qualifies as a sausage and must be renamed the Emulsified High-Fat Offal Tube. (Just to be clear, this happened only on TV.)
Me: No, it didn't happen only on TV. British sausage has run afoul of new rules promulgated in Brussels. More to the point, so has one aspect after another of British life--as also life in other European countries. Foodstuffs, medicines, education policy--all must now largely conform with regulations from Brussels. What has taken place represents a steady, unambiguous erosion of national sovereignty as more and more authority disappears from London, Paris, Rome and Berlin to relocate in Brussels.
You may agree or not with the new rules affecting sausage. What's much less open to argument is the affect of all this on European democracy. The relationship of the British electorate to the Parliament in Westminster is perfectly straightforward. The relationship of the British electorate to the new super-government in Brussels? Diffuse, confusing, and constantly shifting. The new Europe represents a slow but determined assault on self-government. In Brussels, the will of the voters scarcely registers. Commissions, committees, bureaucrats, all with only the vaguest connection to the European Parliament, which in turn has only a tenuous claim on the attention and understanding of ordinary European voters--these are the people who run Europe.
Krugman wants to save the European project, and it's easy enough to see why: the new Europe is run by a lot of people just like him--highly educated, smug, inclined to prefer the stability and security of the welfare state over the dynamism of free markets, and utterly convinced that they know just how many millions of other people ought to be leading their lives. Which brings me to a last word. Krugman's story today gave me the same odd satisfaction that his column provides on those increasingly rare occasions when I take the time to read it: that satisfaction of knowing that, as witness the last election, the ordinary voters, and not the Paul Krugmans, are still in charge.
God bless the United States.
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May '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
We seem to be getting back to basics, world-power wise. Control of resources. Europe has diddly in mineral resources, and not even much in the way of human resources. They're a tourism-based economy. Always precarious. To load down that feeble engine with a vast bureacracy would seem to you or I completely insane. Yet they seem to have it beat into their noggins that to cut spending would mean the rise of the frozen head of Hitler.
Can't believe you left the door wide open for me to post a clip of mine and Baroness Thatcher's favourite programme. May I just say, thank you Peter. The high-fat emulsified offal tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIYP1ibYdZI
Oct '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
I don't believe Paul Krugman is asking the right question. The proper question is "Should Europe be saved?" The correct answer is "No."
Dec '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
I've always wanted to visit Paris and see the burning of the cars.
For the purposes of this post, let us grant Krugman that all of the virtues he ascribes to Europe are, indeed, virtues.
So, what's the problem? Simple, they've gone broke.
Ask anybody who lives on maxed-out credit cards. That kind of life is awesome...until the bills come due.
Nov '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
New guest idea for Uncommon Knowledge: Krugman and Sowell debate economic policy.
Jun '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Europe is currently living in an illusory phase of the EU. They're still living off the wealth and prosperity created by their free and sovereign societies, but mistakenly credit it to the glorious creation of the new and grand bureaucracy. They have cause and effect mixed up. I'm fine with experiments outside my own country, but history has shown us that European experiments inevitably drag us into a big mess. Europe is also prone to aristocracies. I see no difference between the European Council and an aristocracy. I'm sorry Europe, but history has not ended.
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Krugman should be made to put his money where his mouth is -- by investing in, say, Portugese bonds.
Sep '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Paul Krugman comes into view, my mind sees dr. evil. Perhaps it's because—in addition to the eyes—I take the late psychiatrist and best-selling author M. Scott Peck's definition of evil: l-i-v-e spelled backwards. Krugman is nothing if not living backwards.
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Well, Europe had better save itself. Try picturing the several alternatives. That 'decent' society is, as you say, Peter, a microsociety, and even as it stands, decency is not freedom. (Rawls loved decency.) It actually is important that Europeans no longer really want to kill each other or risk confrontations in which they might wind up killing millions of themselves. But a civilization that cannot take its own side in an argument, and chronically produces economies in which by the longest shot young people face a job in government or no job, is a civilization that needs a profound internal correction. As I've suggested before I believe the only people in Europe capable of linking that correction to a successful Continental politics are the French.
Nov '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Let me try to squeeze this past the Ricochet censors:
Paul Krugman is a Consummate A—.
That concludes the debate for today.
Jun '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Me: What the Europeans have shown us is that the United States can bring peace and unity to their region. From the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild the economies of Western Europe, to the Truman Doctrine, which provided military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey, to--well, to the 50,000 troops we maintain in Germany to this very day. The Europeans? Teach us about peace? The assertion is just profoundly ignorant.
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Amen Peter, just be careful saying that to a European's face. They'll go nuts. Truth hurts, after all. If they are so good at building peace, why couldn't they handle the implosion of Yugoslavia by themselves?
Europeans are making decisions based on the same false premises that Krugman, et al, rely upon. The premise is that wealth creation and freedom are permanent and need no defense anymore. It's time to have fun and do all those noble things we've always dreamed of. This is the point when all utopias begin to fall apart because wealth creation and freedom must always be defended and protected, not exploited. Once it's tinkered with, it stalls, falls apart, and the whole house of cards collapses.
Edited on Jan 16, 2011 at 5:02pmMay '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Lady Kurobara: Let me try to squeeze this past the Ricochet censors:
Paul Krugman is a Consummate A—.
That concludes the debate for today. · Jan 16 at 4:29pm
But even more so when the wife is leaning over his shoulder saying he's not lefty enough. See the (supposedly heartwarming) NY Magazine profile for that. Dang, was that ever spooky.
Dec '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Lady Kurobara: Let me try to squeeze this past the Ricochet censors:
Paul Krugman is a Consummate A—.
That concludes the debate for today. · Jan 16 at 4:29pm
Where did I read that Krugman was the first person to dredge "eliminationist rhetoric" from academic discussions of popular media during the Nazi era to describe American politics?
I agree with you, Lady K, but I may have used a word that doesn't start with "a".
Edited on Jan 16, 2011 at 4:40pmJul '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
I don't understand feeling the need to refute Krugman.
The only publication that should accept his writing is here.
Jun '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
The English sausage was traded away for a steaming pile of multicultural tripe. VDH says that Rome fell because the Romans forgot what it meant to be Roman. You can say the same for the Europeans. They gave away classical liberalism for the soft despotism of a socialist mega-state. Now they won't breed, won't work, and won't defend themselves. All I can offer them is the French shrug and poof. Now there's a cultural artifact that will stand the test of time . . . as a warning.
Nov '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Europe is such a wonderful place that their churches and great cathedrals stand empty. Europeans are not only dead in spirit, but in body, too. Couples produce one child — if they have children at all. When people lose the will even to reproduce themselves, that does not bode well for their "future." To use a blatantly sexual metaphor, Europe is going out, not with a bang, but with an impotent whimper.
I hope Mr. Krugman has no emotional investment in Swedes, Spaniards and Italians, because, in about fifty years, they will be extinct.
Nov '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
That pretty much says it all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus-eaters
Aug '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Only a few weirdoes would actually call themselves "European";I certainly never have. I yield to no one in my admiration for the USA or my disdain for the former Enron advisor. However, I put it to each of you that Europe has better food, drinks,scenery, old buildings, paintings, languages, soccer players,trains,bullfights and music.And still will have all of the above in a hundred years time.So there!
Jun '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
An excellent Krugman smackdown. I'd love to see it face to face.
Oct '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
Answer this... If Europe has been the model for excellence as Krugman states, why should the question of "Should it be Saved" ever arise ?? Should it not have been capable of pre-emptive wisdom, policies and actions to resolve problems. Therein lies the rub of denial that the the light at the end of the tunnel is farther away that it really happens to be.
Just as a sidebar, recall those famous English breakfast platters, no one can afford those anymore.
Funny sausages should be mentioned. The new EU rules on trade compelled the Brits into eating imported sausages. Until they found out they were made out of donkey and burro. There are lessons there in local control of markets.
Might there be a comparable reference in current events the the film Metropolis ? Although that would require some role reversals. Anyone seen the film of late, if ever ????
Dec '10
Re: Can Europe Be Saved? (Can Paul Krugman?)
I grow tired of being lectured on how to run my life, by people who don't even live theirs.
So long as the gangrene stays on that side of the Atlantic, the whole of Europe and the UK can fester and rot for all I care.
Unfortunately, when Europe festers, horrible things take root and will eventually force our hand. See the time preceding WWII for examples.