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Quote of the Day: Is Europe Finished?
Let’s cut through the diplo-speak: If Mr. Biden and the Europeans don’t get Ukraine right, Europe’s future is finished.
Putin is Hitler. He is attempting the extermination of a people and the obliteration of their cities. World War II wasn’t fought in Europe to prevent a future nuclear exchange between Russia and the U.S. It was fought because Europe was experiencing the indiscriminate murder of civilians under Nazi military doctrine, now revived by Mr. Putin and the Russian general staff.— Daniel Henninger
In an ambitious flurry of activity, Europe is speaking out and taking action against Vladimir Putin, canceling some of their commitments to him and stepping in to help Ukraine. Most of the Ukrainian refugees are landing in Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. The EU has established an emergency protection system, offering jobs, shelter, and medical treatment. They have also worked at streamlining their entry procedures. The invasion of Putin has been criticized harshly, and Europe has stepped up.
But how long will they enthusiastically deal with this new reality?
At this writing, 4 million people have fled Ukraine; another 6.5 million people are displaced. It’s impossible to know how long the conflict will drag on, or whether the EU countries will be able to support millions of refugees, or how many of the Ukrainians will stay. Will they be able to find work? Will they be able to adjust if they choose to stay? Will they be welcomed by the various countries?
And will the U.S. make a sincere and reasonable effort to supply arms and compassionate support, and for how long?
And yet . . . and yet . . .
Does Europe really have a choice? Over time will they try to ignore the threats that Putin poses to the European continent?
Will they realize that helping Ukraine and Ukrainians and standing up to Putin could determine the very future of Europe?
Published in Foreign Policy
What could Red Green have said that could violate the code of conduct? I can’t imagine.
I tend to agree, that this is more or less what I’ve been led to believe. But I’d be interested in the European mean household wealth versus the American mean.
It seems that home ownership in Europe is far less than for Americans – people tend not to own their small apartments that were mentioned previously – and since the home is the most valuable thing owned by most people, that suggests European wealth would be significantly lower. But that doesn’t necessarily translate to lifestyle, since Europeans tend to have a lot more paid vacation time etc.
I’ve always had a sense that Americans of my generation liked to work. That seems to have waned some as we go through new generation but we still haven’t caught up with Europeans. The Covid pandemic lockdown and other recent pressures on small business will probably help America to catch up with Europe.
What about the nice households?
For all the efforts by the EU to turn the continent of Europe into a superstate, it remains a large collection of nation-states, with their own histories, cultures and languages. Some are in the EU, some are not. There was a meltdown when the Brits checked out, precisely because it countered the march of federalism. There is no comparison with the US, which has a common language, polity and culture, notwithstanding the regional differences. Likewise, comparing household size, family size or income is a waste of time. Citizens of European countries should remember that also.
I tried my best. I actually changed the wording from mean European and mean American to avoid impugning either side. All our European members would have thought “Yes! Mean Americans” and “How dare he speak of mean Europeans!” Fortunately, no one read it that way.
But just to be safe, I suppose next time I’ll refer to nice European household wealth, because everyone will still know I mean mean.
Or just say “average” since that’s what most people take “mean” to…. mean… anyway.
But the average was roughly given. What I wanted to see was the mean, if you get the drift of my, um, meaning.
I must be slow. I was scratchin’ my head for a good minute or two wondering what the heck you meant and why people gave you likes. Now I get it, HA!
Yeah. It isn’t commonly noticed, but if you look at the footnotes on the Web about GDP, etc, you’ll see that national accounts from our main accounting organizations, like IMF, CIA, and US BEA, severely distort the financial data with respect to the tiny countries with the highest GDP.
Luxembourg and Ireland come to mind but there are a number of them, including several in Europe as well as the Caribbean. Those interested can look it up easy enough I guess. The countries are marked with asterisks usually.
Their GDPs are inflated by “pass-thru” corporations created to avoid taxes on the “real” corporations back in the really rich countries.
You’d want to look at one of the sets of National Accounts from agencies that correct for this distortion (there is at least one, can’t think of the name).
I’m not sure how the distortion affects Household Wealth, though. I don’t think it would much, because the ghost assets would tend to be on the balance sheets of Financial or Non-Financial Corporations, which are reported separately from Households. Not sure, just shooting from the hip, but I didn’t pull the trigger.
But Americans have more debt, in some cases, way more. Many of us are living beyond our means. And Europeans cover health insurance of their entire population. I certainly don’t advocate a socialist healthcare system, but our system does leave a good percentage without it. The European system provides economic value that is masked in the numbers. They also retire earlier and have more time off. Let’s put it this way. If Americans have a better standard of living than Europeans, it’s only slightly better. And some of that has to do with lack of natural resources in Europe.
Yes, the free stuff complicates things, but even then the whole lifestyle, apartment size (even subsidized), number of cars, price of gas, heating, spare freezers, food money (even subsidized), cooking and dining out, and even entertainment (in home and out). And to a degree the access to timely and effective medical care.
I assume good wine is €2 a bottle everywhere.
Ask any hospital or healthcare worker and they will tell you that absolutely nobody is denied healthcare services in this country, and the ones who can’t afford it don’t even have to pay for it, not even through taxes. I’ve known people in those circumstances. You can’t say that about European countries where the poor people pay similar tax rates as the rich people. Others criticize the U.S. for not having universal healthcare without knowing the actual circumstances.
Yeah, the idea that American’s are denied healthcare unless they have insurance is just inaccurate. Every Catholic hospital (and many Christian doctors) will take patients gratis. Even our city-owned hospital (until purchased by UCHealth a few years ago) was running budget deficits due to all the indigents it served. When our British friends advocating for an NHS here would suggest that people weren’t getting healthcare, I’d ask them where all the corpses were lining the streets. And the stats on early detection and cancer survival rates for Americans put other countries to shame. Or, they did until Obamacare when veterans stopped being screened annually for prostate and breast cancer, for example. . .
As the saying goes, your healthcare can be high quality, accessible, or cheap. Pick two. Until recently American healthcare was high quality and accessible and paid for for the indigent by high insurance premiums for everyone else. But, we’re moving toward the Cuban model of two-tiers — one system for the wealthy and powerful and a lesser system for everyone else. Sort of like the justice system.
You mean the healthcare system is finally catching up to the education system? Huzzah!
Yes, hospital emergency service, but walk into a doctor’s office and tell them you have no insurance and see what you get. See if you get follow ups and physical therapy and other outpatient services. There is most decidedly a difference between those that have insurance and those that don’t.
Actually in Catholicism (I can’t speak for other branches of Christianity) despair is a mortal sin.
I suspect it’s more than economic. Sen Patrick Moynahan once said that the US tended to be 30 (? I can’t remember the actual number, it might be more than 30) years behind the trends of Europe. I think something has happened in the last 25 years with the loss of religion that has changed the nature of our country.
Walter E Williams wrote about that several times.
I knew an inner-city hospital which turned a profit serving a large percentage of indigent people. From the moment they showed up in the ER they began paperwork for medicaid. Before discharge every moment of care was covered. It worked out well for them, but I’ve never seen it repeated anywhere.
I think it the whole replacement rate idea is bunk. What is the ideal population for Ireland? I have included a handy graph below. Circle the number that that spells doom and circle the number that is idea.
Doesn’t matter if you think there is some ideal population, if the birth rate remains below 2, eventually you end up with none.
Birth rates tend to change. Show me a country whose birth rate has remained constant over a couple hundred years. Or even over one hundred years.
I still think you are not quite aware of how much the poor get. A friend of mine developed brain cancer. He and his wife had lost everything previous to this, lost his job, kicked out of their house, and living off of friends and welfare. Since they had no means of payment whatsoever, the hospital put him in some sort of assistance program for indigents (I’m not sure if governmental or private). He stayed in the hospital for nearly two months, received experimental treatments and had surgery, and eventually slipped away into the next world while his wife and I sat with him in the hospital room. His wife was never charged for his treatment which had to have run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One of my favorite pundits. A big loss to the conservative world.
Also, the hospital that I believe I mentioned on #171 tapped into a statewide indigent medical fund to recoup some of its expenses, plus it got lost income credit for all its free care given as charity. The end result is that they did fairly well off the indigent population. They certainly didn’t lose money overall.
Israel is the only Western country where the population of the secular population continues to grow.
I credit Hamas and other enemies – having enemies helps people find a reason to fight back.
Ahhh. As ‘t’ approaches infinity. There is not much point in focusing on infinity.
No, it doesn’t take infinitely long. Half each time, progresses the same way as double each time. And population is also different in that each new generation only has a certain amount of time to reproduce, before the females are too old.