The European Predicament

[windansea]

Its economy is enfeebled by high taxes and regulations. Unless leaders take unpopular steps today, Europe faces dire consequences.

By Robert J. Samuelson
NewsweekFeb. 9 issue -

Let's be clear. If Europe's economy was healthy it would grow about 4 percent annually for a few years and then settle down to a respectable 2.5 percent or 3 percent. The initial burst would absorb surplus unemployment (the jobless rate is near 9 percent). Once that happened, Europe would ride the gains of new technologies. Nothing like this is occurring.


Since 2000, the economy of the "euro zone" (the 12 nations using the euro) has averaged growth of about 1 percent a year. That's bad for Europe—and everyone else.

In the past year, American-European relations have fixated on Iraq. What's been obscured is how much Europe's loathing of the war has distracted attention from its own failures. Europe's economic model could once be defended as a justifiable political choice. People could select their flavor of prosperity. America's flavor—more competition and insecurity—wasn't for everyone. Europe could pick less anxiety and more vacations. It could sacrifice some economic growth for a bigger welfare state (more jobless benefits, universal health care). This argument no longer works.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4120768/

[KoKo]

1. More right wing stuff trashing Europe from Newsweak...

They never give it up. Trying to deflect from our own staggering economic difficulties by attacking European's longer vacations, health care benefits for all and generally higher standard of living for their citizens than we are currently enjoying under the Bush Usurption.

[xray s]

2. Yeah...wait until we implode

Europe will look pretty good after our corporate-for-profit health insurance program bankrupts the economy.

BTW, I wonder if Europe cooks the books on the unemployment figures like they do in the US. I have read that our real unemployment is closer to 9% too.

[The Zanti Regent]

3. More lies from RS NBC and Newspeak

God forbid that America becomes a society that puts people first instead of money!

[Dirk39]

4. Hello from Europe...

Most of what's said in the article is correct.

"I wonder if Europe cooks the books on the unemployment figures like they do in the US."

Yes, we do, but not as radical as in the U.S.A. (but we try...)

It's due to Globalisation. Without protectionism, we are forced to switch over to the american kind of brutal neoliberal capitalism.
Esp. the USA tries to break open the european countries.

A lot of the foreign policy of the USA esp. towards East-Europe has the goal to establish East-Europe as a kind of Mexico for Europe. The goal is to destroy the welfare states and social security Systems in France, Germany, Sweden etc.

The social democratic and socialistic parties in Europe - nearly all of them were radically changed to right-wing neoliberal parties: Starting with Blair's "New Labour" and Schröder's "New Center".

In a way, esp. Schröder used his antiwar stance to cover up the biggest attack against the welfare state in the history of postwar Germany.
Look at Great Britain: before Blair, Labour got about 90% of their money from labour-unions, now it's somewhere between 10 and 20%, I guess I don't have to tell you, were the money is coming from now!

Blair has installed a kind of dictatorship within the Labour-Party. He wanted to change it from a democratic party into a kind of corporation.

If you don't believe me, read what the IMF has to say about Schröders "reforms". If they praise a country for their economic policy, you know it's the end of democracy and labour rights:

"Now, let me just turn to a brief—something brief on economic policies, and I'd like to make three points over here. The first is that we are very pleased with Germany's new emphasis on structural reforms. Agenda 2010 is very much in the direction of what we have been calling for from the IMF. This is especially so in the area of labor markets, where the reform of unemployment benefits and of social assistance is a very important measure. But also in the area of health and pensions, there are some very, very good beginnings. They don't solve all of Germany's structural problems. The pension and health measures will take us perhaps a third to one-half of the way to addressing the long-term aging costs, and the labor market reforms will also need to be augmented over time, especially to further prod the unemployed to accept jobs that are offered and to deregulate hiring and firing. But, again, I should emphasize that these are a fine beginning when it is all put together and it is all implemented."
http://www.imf.org/external/np/tr/2003/tr031106.htm

The traditional leftwing parties in Europe have failed in uniting and working together. The same is true for the labour-unions. Now, it's too late. No single country can resist this development. Sweden still tries to remain a democracy with a strong social securtiy system, but I doubt they can keep it for long.

The resistance is much bigger in Europe than in the USA. ESp. in France and Italy, where the workers don't even care about the unions anymore. They simply strike.

But good old Europe, once established by the old style Breton Wood's organisation is already history.

Capitalism leads a kind of worldwar under the leadership of the USA to bomb us back into the 19th century, esp. after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

No good news from Germany,
Dirk

[Karenina]

15. Genau!!!

Spot on, Dirk!

[Zhade]

16. Good information. Thank you for sharing it.

NT!

[RainDog]

5. earth to samuelson

the American model isn't working for the majority of Americans, asshole.

more insecurity and competition...yeah, but only if you're middle class or lower.

the overclass has rigidly established socialism in America, while they scream about it for anyone else.

it's enough to make you wish Fight Club were reality.

[AndyTiedye]

6. 1% growth doesn't look so bad from here

our economy has been shrinking for 4 years.

[daleo]

7. My whole life, I have been hearing this gloomy talk about Europe

And yet they still seem to be there. Meanwhile, the counterpoints to these articles are usually lauding some soon-to-be basket-case like Argentina. It is just a propaganda bombardment to keep us from any sense of alternatives out there.

[Dirk39]

8. It's not just propaganda...

it's accompanied by a policy to force it. The USA will not accept any kind of alternative. They will rather nuke Europe from the worldmap than to accept any kind of society that's based on democratic values and the solidarity between human beings. They will not accept Cuba, not Venezuela and they will not accept, what's left of the social security networks in some european countries. It's naive to believe, it's only propaganda. Ask any european in GB, France, Italy or Germany. They will tell you that it's much much more than only propaganda.
It's a worldwar. And they will not stop this until they've changed the entire world into a "labour camp" without labour. That's their kind of democracy.
Dirk

[burrowowl]

9. You hit the nail on the head.

A grammar point: The would (instead of will) rather nuke ... conditional as oppose to future given the rather, without the rather. Uuuuumm!
Yes! G Bu$h will nuke Europe. He probably would like to nuke Europe.

[daleo]

10. I guess I could re-phrase it

I didn't mean it is "just propaganda", as much as it is "certainly propaganda". I agree there are significant forces at work who desire the race to the bottom, and could care less about democratic values, humanism, or just basic decency. But on this side of the Atlantic, many of us count on Europe to provide some kind of an alternative vision. All we can do, on both side of the Atlantic, is continue to resist.

[Dirk39]

12. I hope so....

What I still don't understand is, if the corporations and banks in Europe want to save our money, to defend themselves against the attack of the U.S.A., or if they fight in one "army" along with the U.S.-corporations.

You have to take into consideration that Germany is export-nation Nr. 1 in the word, now. The crisis in Germany is due to the fact that the consumers don't have money to spend anymore. And they're so afraid of the future after the deconstruction of our healthcare and pension-systems that they keep the money they have and don't spend it.

It's the opposite of what's happening in the U.S.A.: your government takes care that american households can spend about 20% more than they would earn, if the U.S. economy would be "real".

It seems obvious to me that the more multilateral forces in the U.S.A. want to share their profits with the Deutsche Bank etc. - just look at Clinton and Clark - in order to prevent Asia, China, Russia and Europe to unite against the USA.
After Kosovo, all the banks in former Yugoslavia are in possesion of the german Commerce Bank, as an example.

But after Djindjic was killed, an already signed contract with german corporations was cancelled in order to give it to some U.S. corporations.

Djindjic was 100% a german puppet. He studied in Germany, even his haircut and his suite was designed by a german PR agency.


It's just a bit more clever and diplomatic than Bush, who seems to push a unilateral agenda: All for us and if they don't shut their mouth, we nuke them...

At least there's one thing, you can say about Europe. All the attempts to force a kind of agenda for a social market society written down in an europe constitution have failed. It seems that France and Germany try to dominate the EU, but I still don't understand, if this is just a kind of reaction against the USA, who wants to blackmail Europe using eastern Europe, or if they want to install their own capitalistic neoliberal "counter-empire".

Confused in Germany,
Dirk

[RainDog]

11. 2nd phase of empire

since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. cannot exact tribute from Europe in the form of military purchases and stationing troops as it could in the past.

in addition, since western Europe does not face a threat from the Soviet Union, it does not feel the same need to kowtow to the U.S. in every way.

hence, our "leaders" declare economic war on you to keep you subjugated...since we cannot sustain our economy anymore w/o a manufacturing base...which you have not given up.

in this second phase of empire, we Americans are also being turned into subjects of the empire, treated in the same way as subjects from other countries, like those in South America, whose citizens are treated like shit while an overclass amasses greater wealth.

the third phase is the fall.

Europe is in a better position than the U.S. to survive this, since our debt is denominated in our own dollars, and since our deficits are bought by others.

like another poster said, we in America have been hearing about how Europe is a mess for decades (and Samuelson has been one of the ones saying this.) He should look at the telephone poll in his own eye before he points out the toothpick in Europe's.

at this point, I feel fairly fatalistic and think that no matter what, the corporate crooks have decided our fate and the U.S. will have to suffer a great fall in order to regain our sanity.

[Dirk39]

13. Hi!

"hence, our "leaders" declare economic war on you to keep you subjugated...since we cannot sustain our economy anymore w/o a manufacturing base...which you have not given up"

Seems to be a key question.

1. Is it really about the lack of a manufacturing base in the USA - it would take decades to reconstruct them, or:

2. Does the USA simply trust in their military force.

I did read Emmanuel Todd's "After Empire", and he desribes the USA as a kind of paper-tiger: a falling Empire, economical bankrupt and with a military high-tech force that can't even lead the wars it wants to fight.
I have more and more doubts that his analysis is correct.
Chomsky's latest work "Hybris" seems to make much more sense to me. And if he should be correct, this really becomes a nightmare. And his work mostly relies on U.S. government papers.

I subscribe to your thesis about the american workers and middle-class:

"we Americans are also being turned into subjects of the empire, treated in the same way as subjects from other countries, like those in South America, whose citizens are treated like shit while an overclass amasses greater wealth."

This might be the reason that they cannot accept the halfway moderate kind of capitalism in Europe.

And you people might be even right somehow about the propaganda against Europe. Nearly all Americans, I know, who have visited Germany, were rather surprised that our cities are clean, the infrastructure works and you nearly don't see people without teeth. I don't want to advertise old - pretty soon not just metaphorical spoken - Europe, we always had our dark corners and ghettos, too.
But the difference was there.

Dirk

[NV1962]

14. The Southern European counter-point:

Why dontcha admonish Bush to "reform" his faltering employment and budget policies, addressing the long-term SS drainer with the 40+ million uninsured and the baby boomer's "gray wave" about to hit your successor's face.

Bah... Predictable rubber stamping English language "business and economy" press rubbish. About time they change that tired old WASP superiority complex! Speaking of Parmalat, how's Ken Lay doing these days? Tell Cheney that Berlusconi says "hi"

Meanwhile, take your Chicago Boys #$@%&* and @#$%$& it! :mad: