One paragraph jumped out at me in David Ignatius’s recent Washington Post column entitled “Fix Europe or Lose It”:
The second requirement is fairness. The European Union has largely been a project of the elites. The powerful companies (and nations) have prospered. The weak have suffered. When the bills came due, the haves told the have-nots to tighten their belts. Should it surprise us that this arrogant system is cracking at the seams?
Does that sound a bit familiar to you? Is it just barely possible that description doesn’t apply solely to Europe? Or even primarily to Europe?
As to the bulk of his prescriptions, we’ve already infantilized the Europeans enough. They need to learn to defend themselves or not be defended. Which leads me to something I’ve written about before: I don’t think the Europeans can afford to do what they need to do to make their societies secure, at least not and continue to support their systems of social spending.
That’s what I mean by saying “Europe is already lost”. The Europe that was imagined is dying. It’s been murdered.
…..and yet there are those (here) who have evoked Europe as a positive template for this country to follow.
“….. And yet there are those (here) who have evoked Europe as a positive template for this country to follow.”
Indeed. Gonna spend all their tax savings there. On N African and Syrian bell men I guess.
To quote the great philosopher, and conveniently sometimes Obama pastor, Rev J Wright….”chickens come home to roost.”
Drew,
When those chickens do come home to roost it will all be conveniently passed backwards onto GWB. In fact it’s been somewhat amusing to hear HRC’s stump speeches sympathetically talking about bringing the economy back, helping people out of their dismal conditions, when she has been a key member of the administration administrating what was to be an economic recovery.
I have always seen the EU effort as another means towards preventing large scale war in Europe. Unfortunate that it was then set up to mostly benefit the large wealthy countries, especially Germany.
Steve
Post re-unification I’ve seen the EU as a continuation of Germany’s project to dominate the European continent.
Guarneri:
I’m spending most of the summer in Europe (mostly work-related) – London, Edinburgh, Berlin, Weimar (Buchenwald), Dresden, the Ardennes/Eifel area, Amsterdam, Paris, Limoges (Oradour-sur-Glane.) I’m sure the threat of terrorism will enter my mind – one thing I have is a good imagination – but it won’t stop me hanging out in sidewalk cafes.
Excellent roads, excellent public transportation, safe and often lovely cities, modern airports, great food . . . Yeah, those poor bastards. I’m sure they’d be eaten up with jealousy at our run down highways, falling bridges, non-existent public transportation, our embarrassing airports and hideously ugly cities, not to mention our population of land whales, our gun violence, our badly-educated population. . . USA! USA!
Let me put it this way: I expect to be in less real danger during 5 weeks in Europe than I’d experience doing 5 days in Oakland, or Indianapolis or Miami.
We’ve got a near world-wide slump going on. US growth has been sluggish since 2009; China’s slowing down considerably; Japan’s economy is slowly contracting; Russia’s even worse off; the Middle East has been taken over by war and revolt . . .
Hardly a surprise that Europe isn’t running over with glee and wealth. Thing’s be somewhat rocky there strictly on economic grounds, regardless of their domestic political and military constraints. So I wouldn’t blame all their problems on the inbuilt errors of the European Union. When the world economy improves, Europe will improve. Europeans will be happy and wealthy again.
They’ll be back to lecturing us on our flaws soon enough.
But Japan’s population is declining, too. Despite the lengthy economic slump in Japan, the trend in Japan’s per capita GDP has been up. If you’re going to manage decline, that’s the way to do it.