Well, sort of. As Paul Krugman points out, they're overselling this:
On the social front, there's a quantum difference. For given depth of recession, the human suffering in America -- where losing your job means losing your family's health insurance, and unemployment benefits are minimal at best -- is vastly greater than in Europe.
On the macroeconomic front, however, the strength of Europe's "automatic stabilizers" has been exaggerated. Yes, government is about 12 percentage points of GDP larger; so each 1 percent fall of GDP automatically increases deficits by more than in the US. But unless the slump is much deeper than even pessimists expect, that won't be enough to offset the stronger US discretionary action.
The IMF has tried to incorporate the automatic stabilizer effect; by their estimates, it still comes up short.
But as multiple people have blogged, this isn't just a matter of the infamous tight-fistedness of Germany's fiscal and monetary policy, born out of the ashes of Weimar; it's genuinely harder for Europe to run a stimulative policy. For one thing, they can't coordinate a broad European policy, which means that any government will see substantial amount of any stimulus "leak" abroad--and also that there is great temptation to free ride. For another, they aren't the world reserve currency, so they can't borrow on the same lavish, practically interest-free scale as the US Treasury. And taking on massive debt is very complicated when you're facing a shrinking population:
Mrs. Merkel has exerted discreet but stubborn leadership in Europe to prevent the kind of overspending that could lead to inflationary pressure on the euro.
It is not, she pointed out, simply a philosophical difference. Borrow and spend today, repay down the road, is a particularly difficult proposition for a country with a shrinking population, she said.
"Over the next decade we will undergo a massive demographic change, and, therefore, borrowing is a greater burden for the future than in a country with a much more continuously growing population, as in the United States of America," Mrs. Merkel said.
That's a real problem. But how sympathetic is the US taxpayer supposed to be? We pay for their military protection, we pay for the profits that develop the drugs and consumer goods they happily consume, and now we're supposed to pay for their economic bailout too. Europe could liberalize its markets, let in immigrants, develop a real military, instead of just critiquing the way we do it. We'll continue to let them free ride, because there's no way to stop it. But I'm starting to think we should rub it in a bit more.
There's also the issue of a German stimulus not being as theoretically effective because, well, they don't have a lot of great things to spend money on. The idea of ours was that we have a lot of public works projects that we've been wanting to do for a while and unemployed people to do them, but Germany already has great roads, great mass transit, generous unemployment benefits and welfare, etc. So the multiplicative effect should be lower.
There's also the issue of a German stimulus not being as theoretically effective because, well, they don't have a lot of great things to spend money on.
Then they could cut taxes.
There's nobody in Europe making us keep US forces there. I think it's a good idea all around, not even in a sour-grapes way, to pull out. The rest is just Europe being Europe, i.e. a sovereign entity (OK, a bunch of sovereign entities) and isn't particularly our business. Why should they adopt our philosophy, when as Sarkozy noted just today, theirs (more specifically, the French notion of regulated and statist capitalism) has been vindicated by recent events?
I agree with you; there's little reason to remain all trooped-up in Europe these days (see my comment below). However, it is incorrect that nobody in Europe is making us keep our forces there. I remember the shameless protests by ex-Chancellor and current Russian toady Gerhard Schroeder way back when GWB made moves toward reducing the number of troops stationed in western Germany. The concern was about the damage it would do to the local economy.
Or maybe Merkel is just correct- borrowing and spending isn't an answer.
That's not true. Borrow and spend has worked for the USA since 1942!
We pay for their military protection, we pay for the profits that develop the drugs and consumer goods they happily consume, and now we're supposed to pay for their economic bailout too. Europe could liberalize its markets, let in immigrants, develop a real military, instead of just critiquing the way we do it.
Sometimes I think we would do well to gradually give up on superpower status and focus on a return to a balance-of-power arrangement with Europe, BRIC, et al. There are, simply, too many costs to being a superpower and, frankly, almost zero rewards. (In fact, I can't think of any right now.)
The problems with this, of course, are obvious: balance-of-power arrangements led to the World Wars. And few people who criticize American imperialism are likely to enjoy a world in which China is the main global guarantor of trade, the seas, free movement, and speech. Free societies would fall all over the place: Taiwan would disappear, and so long Israel, South Korea, Georgia, pacifist Japan, post-Taliban Afghanistan, and any hope of a "free Tibet." Africa and South America would no longer have a steady supply of groundbreaking generic drugs falling into their laps out of the "free" American R&D pipeline. And watch as China subsidizes more Darfurs wherever there are resources and exploitable labor.
Yet we have a situation right now in which, for reasons both historical and coincidental, America bears way more burdens than it can possibly sustain. It will break us eventually; we should let it go. The more we do it unilaterally on our own terms early on the better it will be in the long term.
Adam, I agree with you on the small multiplier of any potential infrastructure-based stimulus in Germany. But what if they had to build their own military? Let's quit paying for their security and let them have their own military-industrial complex. Do we really still worry about modern Germans backsliding into Nazism? The USSR tanks are gone from central Europe; why are we still there?
We'll have to do it some time, why not now, on our own terms?
We have 5% of the world's population. There is no way we can dominate the globe forever. At some point we'll have to adopt a hedgehog strategy. (I was going to write porcupine, an American animal, but nobody likes porcupines, with good reason. They are stupid, destructive, aggressive...)
By the way, the Europeans do have their own military/industrial complex.
The problem with a balance of power argument is that Europe is too granular for it to work. For powers to be balanced, they need to be reasonably equal. The EU probably has slightly more economic power, and a good bit less, but not insubstantial military power than the US and maybe Canada combined. (We can usually get the Canadians on our side).
However, the EU is twenty-five different countries, none of whom on an individual level come close to the economic or military strength of the US. The only way a balance of power relation would work is in the case of a much stronger EU which could force member states into compliance on a broad range of issues, or a much more fractious United States, where most economic, and some military policy was borne by the individual states.
Neither of these cases is particularly plausible. And so long as the US remains in possession of by far the largest power bloc which can execute unified policy, it will face a free rider problem.
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779450&ts=2009-03-10 20:00:35.0
Listen to the Jeffrey Kopstein interview. (this show is worth subscribing to)
He said that the european banks have lent very large sums to the eastern European countries. When they joined the EU, property was cheap, and the assumption was that they could go nowhere but up. People took out mortgages in euros or swiss francs. Now with the downturn, the local currencies have dropped in value, making mortgage payments in foreign currencies too expensive for locals. Austrian banks have the equivalent of 70% of the country's GDP in bad mortgages.
From what I understand Germany and UK have both had bond sales that have been disappointing.
Maybe they can't borrow. Why would anyone lend to someone that the Russians can shut down in a few hours by closing a few gas valves. Etc.
Derek
"...let in immigrants..."
The only place that can send them immigrants is the Muslim world. An Islamic Europe is not a good idea.
Do we have any quantitative data on what would be the effect on the US, of European economic policy in this crisis?
Mexico can't send them immigrants? I was under the impression that this newfangled 'Boat' and 'Airplane' technology was capable of sending people across the oceans.
I don't think it is too controversial to assert that low-income persons looking to escape an underperforming or still-emerging economy for a wealthier economy, and possibly repatriate some of their income to relations back in their native country via postal routes, generally do not save up hundreds of dollars/euros/whatever for international airfare or oceangoing transport if wealthier economies are available overland or via a comparatively shorter and less-costly ferry ride.
As such, immigrants in any volume sufficient to act as a birthrate replacement factor will continue to find their way primarily into the US if coming from Mexico, and primarily into Western European countries if coming from Morocco and Algeria.
If Mexicans can shell out a couple of grand for Coyotes, they can shell out a couple of grand for Alitalia. Airfare might be a barrier to people living on a dollar a day, but Mexico's GDP per capita is $12,400.
The USA is more convenient for illegal immigration (thanks to our "Virtual fence"), that's all.
Go to Manila or even Hong Kong and check out the long lines of Filipinos outside the US Embassy/Consulate, and you'll see an alternate source of (largely Catholic, in that case) immigrants that Europe could attract.
Actually Ecuadorians outpaced Moroccans as the biggest immigrant group in Spain while I was living there 5 years ago, and Eastern Europeans were close behind. Immigrants in Europe are an increasingly diverse group, just as they are everywhere (and yes, of course they fly internationally).
Rather than “rub it in a bit more,” I’d rather we did more to get Europe to liberalize their markets. Offering to make the first steps in reducing or better yet repealing our agricultural subsidies might be a step in that direction (although to be honest I’d favor such a policy change even if it weren’t). Perhaps we could use it as leverage in another round of trade negotiations to get Europe (and Canada) to exempt US-made goods such as pharmaceuticals from price controls and help to equilibrize prices somewhat.
Accepting more immigrants might help with their aging population although I think there’s a difference in terms of assimilation between bringing in immigrants from across the world versus bringing in those from practically next door. The latter are probably more likely to retain strong ties to their country of origin and less likely to fully assimilate as quickly or thoroughly.
As far as the national defense goes, in order to get Europeans to commit themselves to building a real and effective military force for their own defense, there’s going to need to be a serious attitude change in Europe regarding the use of force. Too many of them think that the lesson from WWII which devastated their continent is that “war is bad” instead of “letting an aggressive power invade your neighbors while you do nothing means no one will be there to assist when they come for you.” The problem is that while Europe has exposed itself to blackmail from a Russia that controls its access to natural gas or an Iran nearby, they don’t seem to have the will – in part because they know the United States sees protecting Europe as part of its strategic interest – to do anything about it.
"Over the next decade we will undergo a massive demographic change, and, therefore, borrowing is a greater burden for the future than in a country with a much more continuously growing population, as in the United States of America," Mrs. Merkel said."
It may be a great burden on us too, if our future, larger, population is less productive than our current population. That depends in part on whether we continue our current immigration policy of restricting highly-skilled immigrants while absorbing millions of unskilled immigrants through our "virtual" fences and non-enforcement of immigration laws that relate to unskilled workers.
Amen Dave. We should embrace a skim-the-cream immigration policy and hoard the world's most talented people. Instead we bottom feed like carp. This is bad an "investment" as Europe's nonprocreation.
I'm still not convinced that the European model is vindicated. There are still segments of the population that know that they'll never have a job in their lifetime. The perma-unemployed. Guess those cushy UI benefits are to prevent the peasants from grabbing the pitchforks.
Right. Thank God we hoarded all those German, Irish, Jewish and Italian PhDs back in Ellis Island days.
Thank God we admitted the top German rocket scientists after WWII rather than deporting them to be swept up by the USSR.
I believe immigration in general is good. But favoring educated immigrants pays higher dividends, particularly in the short term.
Wow, so you think being the best and brightest requires a PhD?
Wow. Just wow.
Those who wanted opportunity and a better life and were willing to work for it came to America. Immigration sorted for talent, gumption, and desire.
I know that's the way it worked for our family--my parents were twice immigrants.
When opportunity knocks, go answer the door.
An interesting thing about the Germans, a lot of them have one child in the WWII and post generation. This was true for rocket scientist Dennenberg. The Dallas Morning News obituary said he 'never apologized' for building the V2 and a day in 1942 when the first 'revenge weapon' (translation from the German) flew 53 miles into space was 'the high point of his career.' Maybe they didn't apologize, but they weren't into producing another generation to go to war with. He later designed our Saturn V rocket
what if Europeans simply don't believe that taking money from taxpayers and giving it to the well connected is the best thing to do?
Then the 510,000 members of the European Civil Service shall be fired immediately.
Not much point in talking to me? How very elitist of you.
but are you even aware of what countries have troop commands under ISAF? The Netherlands, Germany, France, UK...let me know when you find the Latvian and Japanese zones in Afghanistan.
Not only am I aware, but here is a link!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Security_Assistance_Force#Contributing_nations
Funny you should mention Latvia-"Latvia – 160 troops (as of February 2009) divided between Kabul and the PRTs in Mazar-i-Sharif and Meymaneh as of December 2007.[4]"
Once you do, you can explain to me how the Bosnian Serbs threatened to drive through Croatia and Slovenia and invade Austria or Italy.
I won't do that because that's stupid. But replace "Bosnian Serbs" with "Russian Forces" and replaced Austria with Georgia, and I won't have to explain anything now, will I?
You believe that there is some kind of military threat to Western Europe that is held at bay only by America's military.
Yes, and I think that most of Eastern Europe agrees most vociferously with me.
I believe that aliens are trying to devour your head, and are held at bay only the force of my karmic mind powers. You owe me! How would you like to pay your debt?
And you are the one talking about there being "not much point in talking to me"? Interesting.
We pay for their military protection
The defense budget of the UK is about the same in terms of GDP as the defense budget of China. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China) I presume we are not paying for China's military protection; who, on this view, is? Maybe the Europeans don't pay so much for military protection because their estimate that there is no military threat to Europe is correct. In that case, they will be about as receptive to this argument as you would be if your neighbor, the Tai Kwon Do blackbelt who keeps 4 assault rifles, 13 handguns and a Bowie knife in his house, came over to your house and demanded some money for having "paid for your protection" for all these years.
we pay for the profits that develop the drugs
Says who? Says you and the lobbyist for Pfizer. Again, the Europeans will tell you to stop paying such exorbitant profits then, you rube; they never asked you get fleeced by your drug companies.
and consumer goods they happily consume
Wha....? I've never even heard this outlandish claim made. What consumer goods on earth are sold at a loss in Europe on the expectation of huge profits in the US? The US isn't even competitive in the cell phone and computer (except Apple), television or auto markets anymore; those products are all designed with East Asian and European customers in mind and sold to Americans as an afterthought. Somehow the fact that drug companies are HQ'd in the US proves that US customers subsidize development, but the fact that Sony, Nokia, Honda, Volkswagen, Toshiba, Miele etc. are HQ'd in Europe and East Asia proves that...US customers subsidize development?
and now we're supposed to pay for their economic bailout too.
I only accept this case may be valid because people who have a good record of economic analysis and prognostication over the past few years, like Krugman, are making it. Seeing it made like this makes me less likely to believe it.
"Says who? Says you and the lobbyist for Pfizer."
Says common sense. Cost-plus pricing doesn't finance a lot of pharma R&D. The market prices Americans pay does finance a lot of it.
"Again, the Europeans will tell you to stop paying such exorbitant profits then, you rube;"
Pfizer's profit margin was 16.78% over the last twelve months. That's healthy, but hardly "exorbitant". It's lower than that of most software companies. And, of course, there are plenty of start-up pharmaceutical companies that never make a profit at all.
"they never asked you get fleeced by your drug companies."
Are you not aware that European drug companies operate here too, and that U.S. consumers subsidize their R&D as well by paying market prices for their drugs?
their estimate that there is no military threat to Europe is correct
So I suppose the troubles in Bosnia and Georgia is just "those crazy cousins acting up again"?
I find it interesting that Eastern European countries were sending troops left and right to help in Afghanistan and Iraq. So were certain Central American countries, Canada and Japan and South Korea. I think there is a recurring theme with this support, that being the US has held the line for the world when it comes to liberty, and we may not be perfect but the alternative is far worse.
In that case, they will be about as receptive to this argument as you would be if your neighbor, the Tai Kwon Do blackbelt who keeps 4 assault rifles, 13 handguns and a Bowie knife in his house, came over to your house and demanded some money for having "paid for your protection" for all these years.
PJ O'Rourke's rebuttal to this comparison seems more apt-
"The missile shield might or might not stop missiles, but, even unbuilt, it was an effective tool for gathering intelligence on Russian and Chinese foreign policy intentions. We knew how things stood when the town drunk and the town bully strongly suggested that we shouldn't get a new home security system."
That home with the security system is the ideology competing against the town drunk and the town bully for who gets to make the rules.
Pick a side.
people who have a good record of economic analysis and prognostication over the past few years, like Krugman
You have a fascinating definition of a "good record".
Not much point in talking to you, but are you even aware of what countries have troop commands under ISAF? The Netherlands, Germany, France, UK...let me know when you find the Latvian and Japanese zones in Afghanistan. Once you do, you can explain to me how the Bosnian Serbs threatened to drive through Croatia and Slovenia and invade Austria or Italy. And then you can explain how the Russian Army's invasion of Georgia threatens Germany; and if you manage to do that, you can try and explain why the same logic doesn't imply that NATO's occupation of Kosovo threatens Russia.
You believe that there is some kind of military threat to Western Europe that is held at bay only by America's military. I believe that aliens are trying to devour your head, and are held at bay only the force of my karmic mind powers. You owe me! How would you like to pay your debt?
I believe, yes, that Russia doesn't bother to mount a threat to central and western Europe because our military is there. I believe that if they had the same level of military spending, and no US bases there, and the US made it clear that they would not intervene in the event of an invasion, eventually Russian troops would pour through the Fulda gap, though it might take a decade or more. The only military in Europe which can project any significant power beyond its own borders without substantial US logistical support is Britain, and even their capacity is pretty limited.
As for pharma research, no, this doesn't just come from pharma reps; it's the same answer you'll get if you ask David Cutler, or any other reputable health care economist. The prices that Europeans pay are not high enough to compensate for development risk on most drugs. If we stop paying, the pace of new drug development is expected to grind to a near-halt unless we find some other way to fund it.
Matt: One way to find out is to withdraw all US commitments towards Europe. Withdraw from Nato, etc. Then wait for a few years to see if you are right.
The US guaranteed that it would put it's own population's survival on the line if Europe was attacked by nuclear. Any military threat was and still is considered an attack on the US itself, and would be responded to with the same vigor. That has guaranteed European security for 60 years or so.
The fact that no one dares reap the whirlwind says how effective it is, not how useless of an idea it is.
Derek
Not much point in talking to me? How very elitist of you.
but are you even aware of what countries have troop commands under ISAF? The Netherlands, Germany, France, UK...let me know when you find the Latvian and Japanese zones in Afghanistan.
Not only am I aware, but here is a link!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Security_Assistance_Force#Contributing_nations
Funny you should mention Latvia-"Latvia – 160 troops (as of February 2009) divided between Kabul and the PRTs in Mazar-i-Sharif and Meymaneh as of December 2007.[4]"
Once you do, you can explain to me how the Bosnian Serbs threatened to drive through Croatia and Slovenia and invade Austria or Italy.
I won't do that because that's stupid. But replace "Bosnian Serbs" with "Russian Forces" and replaced Austria with Georgia, and I won't have to explain anything now, will I?
You believe that there is some kind of military threat to Western Europe that is held at bay only by America's military.
Yes, and I think that most of Eastern Europe agrees most vociferously with me.
I believe that aliens are trying to devour your head, and are held at bay only the force of my karmic mind powers. You owe me! How would you like to pay your debt?
And you are the one talking about there being "not much point in talking to me"? Interesting.
Megan: you're living in a dream world here, one that wasn't even realistic in 1982. There was a moment when Russia could have taken Western Europe with scarcely a fight and the US had made no security guarantees to defend it, when in fact US strategy in case of a Russian invasion was to retreat and leave Europe. That moment was 1947-48. And Russia, at the height of Stalinist nationalism, didn't do it. Today, Russia has not the remotest interest in invading large neighboring states and lacks any capability to execute such an invasion if it wanted to. Germany currently spends about as much on defense as Russia does, despite having a population 60% Russia's size; Russia has announced it is boosting defense spending this year by 25% but few observers believe this is possible, given the country's collapsing financial situation, and it most likely belongs to the Russian practice of aspirational boasts.
Most importantly, what on earth would Russia stand to gain by invading Western Europe? Think about this: could Russia, today, seize Georgia? Yes, of course it could, as US powerlessness last summer showed. Has it? No. It broke off a pliant proxy state in South Ossetia, then stopped. Why? Because being surrounded by Russian-aligned Slavophile proxies serves Russian interests. Occupying hostile countries does not serve Russian interests. And we're talking about Georgia. The idea that Russia would try to occupy a country like Poland, in this day and age, is just ludicrous. It belongs to a different century.
Matt Steinglass is a voice of reason in this thread
Megan Mcardle said
Hmm... Sounds like a cheesy war movie. Or a Civilization scenario. I vaguely remember entertaining conversations with similar themes in High School. But what if the Chinese and the Indonesians would team up with the Russians? And they had, like, phasor beams? Or alien weapons technology?
Matt Steinglass said
To say nothing of, you know, the fact that a Russian invasion of any major European country would bear enormous risks even if European conventional armies were not up to the task.
People seem to forget that Britain and France have nuclear weapons. Yes, Russia has a lot more. But, what the hell? Putin is no saint, far from it. But people here keep assuming that Russians are extremely eeevil, to the point of, not just acting against their interests, but happily engage in military conflicts against states with nuclear weapons, on their allies, just for evilness sake. Which they were somehow able to avoid during the whole Cold War. Even the Iron Curtain was formed with a large support of the Eastern Europe countries' population.
Historically, the Russians have played by far more often the role of the invaded than of the invader. They have always been very good at defending themselves, and pretty lousy at attacking.
The EU would not tolerate any attempt of recreating the Iron Curtain, but it's hard to believe the Russians would try anyway. Why should they? Why doesn't the U.S. start invading countries? Is it just moral superioriry?
That would be 1947-8, when the US was the world's only nuclear power, yes?
The US did not decide that it would use its nuclear arsenal to stop a Communist invasion of West Europe until the formation of NATO in mid-1948. Certainly the American public would have been unlikely to support using nuclear weapons against Russia in 1947 to prevent Russia from taking over the western zones of Germany; Americans were not about to go to war again at that point on behalf of those poor Germans who had just waged war against them. In 1947 the USSR had 300 divisions within striking range of the US/UK/French zones of Germany. (No, that is not a typo: three hundred.) The US had 60,000 soldiers left in all of Western Europe. The US military's plan, if Russia invaded Western Europe at that point, was to retreat.
1) C'mon, nobody says that the US pays for the UK's security. They (and perhaps France) actually have real militaries with deployment capacity.
No, it's mostly Germany that benefits from not having their own real army proportional to the size of its economic and political clout in the world. It's a relic from the post-WWII era. And if Europe were really able to handle their own security, why did they stand around blinking in confusion when Serbia was ethnically cleansing Bosnia? And who did they call on to take care of business when their impotence was clear? Was it China?
And, for that matter, did the German Navy distribute potable water and food in the hardest-to-reach areas after the 2004 tsunami? Was it the UN? (No, they were still sending "fact-finding missions" to the Jakarta Hilton.)
2) Please explain how new drugs will come on the market without patent protections and the subsequent higher prices. Please explain why 75% of all new drugs in the world are developed and marketed first in the US. Countries that don't respect the patents or that negotiate bulk prices aren't sharing the cost of all that R&D. (Imagine how many new and revolutionary new drugs might be innovated if everybody around the world helped share the costs!)
3) I agree with you about the US losing its edge in technology. But it is still the leader. The fact that electronics -- once invented -- can be produced more cheaply and efficiently in other countries, however, says more about asymmetric labor conditions and laws than anything else. Did you know that Europe is trying to launch their own GPS system, called Galileo? If all goes well, it may be functional in 2013.
4) It's strange that whether or not you accept a statement as valid has more to do with who is saying it rather than its own intrinsic merit. But, I suppose we all do this to a greater or lesser degree.
Your comments betray your lack of credibility. On your point about military spending, note how you conveniently cherry-picked the Brits, the only European country with a halfway decent military. And looking at spending doesn't even tell the whole story. Most of Western Europe's militaries are utterly incapable of actually conducting meaningful field operations and wouldn't stand a chance against the average U.S. state National Guard. Much of the money those countries putatively spend on their armed forces is not actually spent on creating a fighting force, since they don't really believe in fighting. The Dutch navy, for instance, has basically devolved into a gay hookup network. Please note that most of the European forces that are actually in Afghanistan (and there aren't many) are mainly not permitted by their governments to actually, you know, fight. Or even carry a weapon, for that matter.
You can sputter until you are blue in the face, but facts are facts.
German defense spending is about 1.5% of GDP. Indian defense spending is about 1.9% of GDP. Not a big difference, considering Germany's economy is a lot larger. As with my earlier China/UK example, the US is presumably not subsidizing India's national defense. So who, on Megan's view, is? Note that unlike Germany, India has a huge, nuclear-armed neighbor, Pakistan, which is actually an enemy state and with which it remains engaged in low-grade intermittent warfare over disputed territory in Kashmir; and yet still, its defense budget is scarcely larger, as a percentage of GDP, than Germany's, which is surrounded by friendly, stable democracies.
The point is that Western Europe faces no military threat. Megan's contention that Russian forces would eventually "pour through the Fulda gap" absent US defense commitments is a point on which she actually departs from reality and lives in a malevolent dream world. I have a lot of disagreements with Megan, but I don't generally think she lives in a non-fact-based universe; on this point, however, she does.
I'm not sure what your point here is since it does not actually refute anything I wrote.
Again, you go back to spending on defense, rather than looking at actual defense capabilities. True, India -- being a poor country -- does not have a high-tech (read: expensive) military, but it has lots of manpower. Please recall what poor, primitive China was able to do in the Korean conflict by virtue of sheer numbers. India has plenty of capability to take care of itself in the neighborhood in which it lives.
But as for Germany, if it is so safe and secure, why should it spend any money on defense? Why not just drop the pretense and go full-peacenik? And since the Poles and Czechs are in the same boat, they could do the same thing, right? I mean, nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan!
Sheesh... talk about a dream world....
Back here on planet earth, we know that events can change quickly, and it’s awfully hard to create a capable military out of thin air when an emergency arrives. And having a weak military practically ensures there will be an emergency since international bullies always interpret lack of military strength as national weakness (and they are right!). If Falklands had been a German protectorate, they would all be speaking Spanish today and goose-stepping for Dear Leader Kirchner.
While it is unlikely that Russia would ever outright invade and occupy Poland again, such a drastic step is unnecessary to place undue pressure on a small, weak neighbor and keep it under Putin's thumb. Furthermore, the prospects for a Russian invasion of the Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics are much less clear. That's how things really work in the "fact-based universe."
So you would argue that Germany, a wealthy country surrounded by friendly democracies, should spend a higher percentage of its GDP on defense than India, a poor country with a nuclear-armed enemy failing state as a neighbor? Or are you arguing that India, too, like Germany, is a fruity country of peaceniks whose weakness is just inviting attack from bullies? What percentage of GDP should Germany spend on defense to deter attack by...who...?
Why shouldn't Germany stop spending on defense entirely? The question is a reasonable one, and I think the response is the one you provide: it's hard to reconstitute your military out of nothing, and international conditions can change. Hence the logical response to being in a situation where there is no current military threat, but one might conceivably develop in the future, is to do what governments have done throughout history in times of peace: cut defense expenditures to a low level, but maintain a professional army in case things change.
"Having a weak military practically ensures there will be an emergency": let's look at the data. South America was full of strong militaries in the '70s, all of which are now much weaker except for Venezuela and Colombia. Have Brazil, Argentina and Chile faced attack by "bullies"? Nope. Just one small-time flareup, and it was between -- the two militarily strongest countries, Venezuela and Colombia. Southeast Asia was full of strong militaries in the '70s, now all much weaker except for Burma. So has Vietnam, say, been attacked by "bullies", now that its military is so much weaker? Nope. It was attacked by China -- in 1979, when its military was much stronger and China's was much weaker. And so on. Look at conflicts around the world, and what you'll find is that while the relationship between military strength and frequency of attack isn't nonexistent, it's very weak, and is basically drowned out by the countervailing effect, which is that countries with strong militaries tend to provoke their neighbors to develop strong militaries, raising tension levels and ultimately provoking conflicts with each other. In general what you see, looking around the world, is that regions where countries have weak militaries tend to have fewer conflicts, and regions where countries have strong militaries tend to have more conflicts.
For instance: China's defense expenditures are currently much lower than the US's as a percentage of GDP, about half in fact. If China doubles its defense expenditures to the US's level, will that make the likelihood of China getting into a military conflict lower, or higher?
Finally, I agree with you that the small countries located next to Russia, unlike Germany, do indeed face serious security concerns, particularly because of internal tensions with their ethnic Russian minorities. It is reasonable to argue that Germany has responsibilities for common NATO defense of the Baltics for which it should increase defense spending, in the interests of the common European project that has greatly benefited Germany. What's not reasonable is to argue that Germany itself faces some kind of threat of invasion that it's too dreamy to recognize. And for other countries besides the Baltics located next to Russia, everyone should seriously ask themselves whether it makes sense to encourage them to provocatively join a counter-Russian European security bloc that doesn't actually want to stick its neck out for them because they're not really European, rather than accommodating themselves to the fact that their big strong neighbor is Russia, not Germany or the US. How, for instance, has Cuba's decision to join a Russian security bloc rather than an American one worked out, over these past 40-odd years?
Well, yes, but also consider that, in the case of Germany at least, their history makes them very leery of inflation. Germany in the interwar period was ravaged by inflation, leading to economic discontent which allowed the rise of the Third Reich and Hitler. Regardless of the accuracy of that narrative, once you go through something like that you don't want to come within a 10-foot pole of touching it again.
For us, in contrast, unless you're from a certain segment of the American Right, the narrative you probably heard about our Depression was that it was terrible with high unemployment, then we elected FDR, and government spending saved the day, or as Alabama sang, "Mister Roosevelt, gonna save us all. ... Papa got a job with the TVA, bought a washing machine and a Chevrolet." Regardless of the accuracy of that narrative, and even if you don't agree with it, you likely don't have wild emotional alarm bells that go clanging every time someone in the midst of a downturn suggests something that sounds like it might lead to inflation.
But how sympathetic is the US taxpayer supposed to be? We pay for their military protection, we pay for the profits that develop the drugs and consumer goods they happily consume, and now we're supposed to pay for their economic bailout too.
To which, I guess, a European's answer would be "we didn't ask you to pay for any of this". The United States benefits greatly from bases in Europe, and now that the Soviet Union is gone they really don't need us there. They're certainly freeloading off drug US drug development, but the drug companies are certainly free to eschew those markets.
As for the "stimulus", I doubt it will have any salutary effect in the US or anywhere else (outside of Washington DC), and can certainly understand if the Europeans feel no obligation to impoverish the next generation through recycled 1930s cargo-cult economics.
tsotha,
To which, I guess, a European's answer would be "we didn't ask you to pay for any of this". The United States benefits greatly from bases in Europe, and now that the Soviet Union is gone they really don't need us there.
Hardly. While the U.S. imposed its presence after WWII, most of Western Europe very quickly realized the benefits of outsourcing their national defense, which freed up money for social welfare programs. Sure, they bitch and complain about our bases from time to time because it still pricks their pride, but please note the uproar from Germans when we drew down some of our forces a few years back and closed a couple of bases. No they really, really want us there. Besides, who will contain Russia if we don't?
They're certainly freeloading off drug US drug development, but the drug companies are certainly free to eschew those markets.
Actually, they aren't. U.S. pharma companies have made noises in the past about boycotting Europe and its price controls only to be told in no uncertain terms that such action might cause European governments to break the companies' patents and start making generic versions of their products for European use. Yes, this would cause a huge trade war, but the moral posturing that accompanies medical politics makes it more than an empty threat. For now, the drug companies would rather accept the tiny profits they make in Europe rather than risk such a blow up.
Our defense spending is not a public good, but a public bad.
Yeah, 'cause freedom and liberty just suck.
Lets offer Big Pharma a choice; sell your drugs in the US at the lowest price that they sell in either Western Europe, Canada, Australia or Japan. Which ever is the lowest that is the US selling price. Or reincorporate in the US, move all of the R & D and manufacturing to the US and charge what you need to make the profits needed. They can then export all their product lines at the lowest price sold in the US with the US levying countervailing duties on products from countries that copy the drugs or infringe the patents of the now US companies with the the countervailing duties paid to the companies.
If the Europeans had to pay their share proportionate share of the drug costs, their health insurance schemes would not be relatively cheap in comparison to ours. Besides can anyone seriously argue that the UK's NHS is anything worth having? Any Brit with money has their own private health insurance. Canadians routinely cross the border for treatment rather than endure rather long waiting times for treatment for chronic conditions. You get what you pay for and part of why our system is so expensive is the market rigging in insurance done by the states and the feds for political purposes in addition to the mandates.
Several commenters noted sneeringly about the insignificance of the value of our Armed Forces. Fine, let them have their wish. Pull our troops back home. But lets keep our navy and air force second to none along with a more powerful marine corp. The Europeans can solve their own problems if their vital supplies or supply lines are threatened. And we should restrict their exports in a mirror fashion to their restrictions of our exports. Nothing personal, just strictly business. I'm sure the Chinese and the South Koreans and the rest of Asia won't mind a newly resurgent Imperial Japanese Navy with proper aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, cruisers and destroyers making sure her supply lines are never cut. Strictly an expansionary Self Defense Force to insure Japan isn't starved to death. Nothing at all like the old imperialism. The Europeans can create their own joint armed forces for the same reasons, after all if they can create a customs union, a currency union, a common parliament why not a defense union?
As much as I detest the new communist democratic party and its new head marionette Obama, I must admit I derive a certain evil joy in seeing the Europeans and the rest of the world leaders squirm in horror as they finally got their wish; an American President and Congress as left or more left than they are.
I don't get what this all is about. Are we europeans supposed to print money too? Or stop producing generic drugs? Or invade some poor counrty? I really don't seem to find good argument for any of those.
I think the arguments for demand-side stimulus (i.e. more government deficit spending) is pretty strong, and can be justified by looking at how well European states who engaged in deficit spending did in the '30s relative to those that didn't. On the other points, I'm with you.
A good example of deficit spending in the 30s? Like Germany? Low blow arguments aside, how is '30s comparable to today's economics? Same level of public debt? Same economy structure (national as well as international)? It's like using same medicine on different species altogether.
From a different angle, government spending here in Eastern Europe is encouraging so much corruption it's not pretty. It is nice Americans trust their government more (I really envy that), but I have to wonder if we can afford to tempt ours?
PS. yes, I like to use lots of question marks :]
Why isn't Germany in the '30s a good example of deficit spending? It worked, right? I know there are those on the right who argue that concentration camps are an inevitable result of deficit spending on public works, but I actually think you can have a federal highway program without becoming a police state... :]
I agree with the sentiment of this article. Virtually the entire "miracle" of modern Europe is a direct result of both the US' largesse and our "imperialism". No one benefits from the Post WW2 geopolitical alignment than Europe. That includes the Marshall Plan, NATO, and our strong encouragement for the initial French/German bipartisanship which ultimately led to the EU. And it's just as important today. For instance, had the US not ultimately stepped up and intervened in former Yugoslavia in 1999, I seriously doubt the debut of the euro currency would have gone as planned. In that conflict, the Croats had German backing, the Serbs had Russian and Greek backing, and euro-paralysis ensued. The continent threatened to implode on the same old fault lines. NATO has been a godsend for Europe. Take away American presence and we'll see how long before the old nationalism displaces pan-europeanism.
I mention all this to point out that continental Europe still owes us big. They've been milking the free ride for a long time now, and the response I always get is "well, nations work in self interest, and if the US wasn't gaining something from being Europe's sugar daddy and godfather, they wouldn't be doing it."
There's self interest and then there's self interest. Our sponsorship of post WW2 Europe went above and beyond mere self interest. And that means that now, one of the few times we are actually calling for their cooperation in more than a symbolic way, they should be made "an offer they can't refuse".
We seem to be rediscovering a common interest with Russia over Iran. Maybe that would be a good background to consider removing our forces from Western Europe, Germany in particular, if they insist on obstructing our plan to save the global economy.
Again, I've reached the conclusion that modern "post national" Europe is a house of cards that will fall if and when the US decides to make it happen. But the US probably won't always have that power. And on another note, an entirely unexpected benefit of Obama's election is that, likely for cultural reasons, he's the first president who seems to be above the sway of the European lobby, for lack of a better term. People have noticed the cool response he gave Gordon Brown, and whether it's mere diplomatic incompetency or an actual overt attempt to show disdain, it draws attention to the fact that this is the first non-ethnic European president, and the first president who may have a different attitude about Europe than those who still view it as the cultural motherland to which we must somehow remain beholden. He doesn't need a special friendship like GWB did with Blair, he doesn't have the Rhodes scholarship bond like Clinton, and let's be honest, all the presidents from previous generations grew up with the White Man's Burden view of the world--that those of 'anglo saxon stock' are the natural ruling class of the world regardless of which side of the pond they're on.
That last paragraph was a bit speculative, but it all ties into the point that American and European interests will continue to move apart over time now that the Cold War is over, and that we shouldn't be afraid to upset the apple cart by being tough with them, especially when we still have most of the apples.
our strong encouragement for the initial French/German bipartisanship which ultimately led to the EU.
The Schuman Plan was a French initiative that grew out of French anxiety at increasing Anglo-American dominance of European and German affairs. It was an expression of France's consistent top priority in post-45 econ arrangements: to ensure French steelmakers access to German coal and coke from the Ruhr Valley. It's true that the US didn't oppose the formation of a European cartel to set prices and production quotas for steel and coal, but to say that Europe owes us because we didn't oppose their initiative to form a joint economic body is...weird.
On the Marshall Plan, Europe remains grateful, but our investment has been paid back many times over already. If you invested in Microsoft in 1982, it's already made you rich. You can't now say that every Windows user owes you a debt of gratitude for making their computer use possible, and ask them to come paint your house for free.
Gee, isn't stupid overblown nationalism a beautiful thing?
It brings people together! Mainly stupid people, but still. So, even though Megan was skeptical, to say the least, about the current administration approach to the crisis, now we find her deriding European countries' "wussy little stimulus package and relatively tight monetary policy". That's libertarianism for you. And favorably quoting Krugman! You know, the brilliant trade theorist that, according to Megan's evil twin, always gets it wrong when speaking about macroeconomics. It couldn't possibly be that Europeans prefer the sensible economics of Robert Barro. After all, who knows what are the true values of those fiendish multipliers? In case of doubt, better stay out of debt.
One must conclude that, for Megan and a bunch of commenters, large deficit spending acquires magical properties beyond U.S. borders, and other countries' solutions must come out of bad faith and a malignant wish to free ride. Why do they insist in dealing with the crisis their own way? Why don't they just accept the wisdom emanating out of the country that provoked the current crisis in the first place?
I mean, they owe us.
What about WW2? We've had it with French and Germans. They were against the Iraq war, for crying out loud. What do they know?
What about our defense spending, that we engage in purely out of the kindness of our hearts? A kindness that grows with each passing year, immune to petty considerations like recessions and the end of cold war. What about our drugs, whose cost of development we choose to bear at the cost of the health of our own present citizens? Oh, and let's ignore that half of the basic research that ultimately leads to promising avenues for drug development is subsidized by European states.
It would be understandable, even legitimate, for Krugman or DeLong to have this European-bashing little patriotic rant. At least they would have consistency on their side. Not Megan. Not many other people around here.
My congratulations to those who managed to be immune to the fever.
One point worth making here: the benefit of the U.S. military presence in Europe isn't limited to defending Western Europe from the Russians. It has also helped facilitate peace and stability within Western Europe. The idea of Western European countries fighting each other now may sound far-fetched, but they of course had a rich history of doing that prior to our establishment of an effectively permanent military presence there after WWII. I wonder if the European economic integration would have developed as far as it has without our stabilizing presence.
The unpleasant - for both europhiles and euro-detractors - truth is that what Europe ultimately chooses to do or not to do in addressing current economic difficulties is not very important because Europe itself is no longer very important. This truth will simply become more apparent with every passing year.
Yes, the U.S. has been, NASCAR-like, pulling Europe around the track since WW2 and Europe has, for its part, been content to tuck in and draft along in our wake. However much Europeans bitch, moan and condescend, the one thing they never do is pull out alongside and actually dice for the lead. This is because, as I believe Europeans understand, even if they will never so admit publicly, Europe simply lacks the horsepower to do so.
But it's pointless to complain about this now. The peak of relative expense for the U.S. in this arrangement is somewhere probably no longer even visible in our national rear view mirror, it certainly is not in front of us. 50 years ago, a far smaller U.S. spent, proportionally, vastly more than at present, to secure a far relatively larger Europe.
Europe's relative decline in population vis-a-vis the U.S. continues. Its now-structurally sclerotic economies also cannot be realistically relied upon to be of more than marginal use in cleaning up the current mess, no matter what the several EU governments do. By the end of the current century, even allowing for considerably enhanced life expectancies, U.S. population will at least double while that of Europe will dwindle by 2/3rds. Future new drugs, for example, will benefit we Americans proportionally more than the dwindling population of free-riding Europeans with every passing year. If we have to subsidize a dying population of existential losers in order to insure our own brighter futures because of differential policies regarding pricing and profits - well - I, don't personally find that too high a price to pay. He ain't heavy; he's my European brother - and he has a wasting disease.
As for European defense expenditures - same story. Sure, they're low. Could they be boosted? Politically, probably not. Russia, in its much-reduced current circumstances, still seems to like to regard itself as an aspirational threat to its neighbors - threatening neighbors being, it seems, a core aspect of Russian national self-identity - but 50 years ago it was a genuine threat. As Russia's own demographic collapse is proceeding at a pace even faster than that afflicting the rest of Europe, Russia, too, dwindles in both absolute and relative terms as a threat with each passing year. Like the rest of Europe, Russia is going to die. I'm guessing the eventual autopsy will show the cause of death to have been cirrhosis of the liver.
Western European defense industry is still a factor in the world, but less of one than formerly, in many respects. As for European militaries, the only relatively large ones that can project credible force and have any recent track record of successful combat operations are, as others have already mentioned, Britain and France. It is fair to note that some of the former Soviet satellite countries have given good accounts of themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the total size of their militaries is not large. France, even under the relatively U.S.-friendly Sarkozy, hardly appears poised to materially assist the U.S. with the heavy lifting aspects of the ongoing Long War Against Islamic Tribal Barbarism. France will, as always, serve mainly France.
So, yes, it is probably reasonable to politely request that, for instance, Germany might find other venues a better bet for the "adventure tourism" style of foreign troop deployment it has - non-usefully - undertaken as alleged participation in NATO ops in Afghanistan. But this is a marginal niggle at best. Let the Europeans do whatever they want. It won't, in the larger scheme of things, much matter just what that is. In a century or less, most of the current European countries will join Thrace, Phrygia and Mycenae as extinct national entities.
The source of the current economic woes in the U.S. was Democrat congresscreatures and left-wing "community organizers" combining to force unassimilable amounts of subprime wood alcohol into the mortgage-backed securites punchbowl. Everyone had a fine old time for awhile, but now, predictably, a lot of folks are dying and going blind. We need to filter the punch, triage the injured and get the party restarted. We don't need to nationalize the party, fire the bandleader or shake down the waiters and valets for their tips. We certainly do not need to write huge bad checks so we can pass cash around to our corrupt, wastrel cronies or radically reorganize American society along the lines long favored by the self-liquidating Europeans.
Dick, how certain are you of your demographic predictions?
I'm no demographer myself, but it seems to me that with anything involving statistical projection based on a snapshot of a current trend is prone to a wide margin of error. Population trends in particular seem to be one of these areas. As much as I wish it were true, I don't see Europe simply disappearing because its people aren't having enough kids at the moment.
From my point of view, with WW1 and WW2 Europe basically finished itself off. Western Europe lost the will to fight after WW1 and for the most part simply capitulated to the goose stepping Germans in WW2. By all rights, the Soviets should have ended up occupying most of the continent after WW2, but for the USA's incredible efforts at containment.
They would be speaking either German or Russian if not for the US. And, while the belligerent attitudes that started WW1 and 2 are gone, the pacifist, capitulating attitudes that enabled the Germans to let the Dutch, French, etc run their occupation for them haven't. People talk about Iraq's sovereign status not being legitimate because they still can't defend their borders with their own army, but how different is the situation in Europe? Take away the presence of benevolent American troops, not to mention the NATO treaty guarantees, and how stable is Europe?
They gave up the fight sometime between 1919 and 1938 and haven't gotten it back yet. They've been overrun first by Germany and the USSR, followed by Pax Americana, and here we are today.
Quite certain. And I claim no originality on this score. The 'native stock' populations of the nations of both Western and Eastern Europe have been reproducing at well below the minimum replacement rate of 2.1 live births per woman for at least three decades now. Hardly a 'snapshot' and not a trend subject to much in the way of credible optimism. I don't believe there is now a single European country whose native population has a reproduction rate above 1.7 and many are as low as 1.2 or 1.3.
A reproduction rate of 1.3 means that each successive generation is only 2/3rds the size of the one preceding it. The increase in average longevity and delayed childbearing have made generations a bit longer than formerly, but even if we assume a 'generation' to be 25 years, this means that in a mere century, the then-'current generation' of native stock citizens in the fastest-declining European nations will be only 2/3 x 2/3 x 2/3 x 2/3 the size of the current one - that's 16/81sts or a bit less than 1/5th. In a century, then, the 450 million or so current Europeans will have dwindled to 100 million or so - plus or minus. The trend line in Europe not only shows no sign of any saving uptick, it is, if anything, picking up steam in the direction of even more prompt oblivion.
The U.S., in contrast, will probably number somewhere between 600 and 750 millions by 2109. Only China and India will have larger populations, but for a variety of reasons, including rapidly rising living standards, falling fertility rates and such disasters as China's long-standing 'one-child policy' - each will be only roughly twice or maybe 2-1/2 times as populous as the U.S. by 2109.
The demographic doom of traditional Europe is now widely accepted even by Europeans, as in Angela Merkel's bald statement at the current G20 conference that Germany will not join America in any fresh orgy of inflationary borrowing and spending because it is a certainty Germany will not have sufficient future citizens to pay off said notes.
Is there uncertainty about the ultimate fate of what we may as well refer to as White Europe? Not in any very hopeful sense of the word. A nation's future population size is completely determined by the current and future reproduction rate of its current and future citizenry and the expectable number of future immigrants. Reproduction-wise, Europe is in a long-term 'going-out-of-business' mode. Immigration-wise, Europe has decisively demonstrated an utter lack of ability, or even inclination, to acculturate its recent large wave of immigration from the tribal barbarian parts of the world to its civilized norms. I see no basis for hoping either situation will improve in future.
As Europe dwindles, job opportunities will continue to contract as well, making it impossible to support more and more hostile immigrant barbarians on the various national doles as is done currently. Thus, I believe in-migration to Europe will come under serious restriction, bordering on complete non-intercourse, with both Arab and Black Africa in only a few more years.
The only suspense, then, where the fate of Europe is concerned, is whether or not the already established immigrant ghettos will boost their numbers in the coming century sufficiently to support an internal attempt at overthrow and subjugation of the remaining dwindling white populations, or whether the reproduction rates in these communities will prove, perhaps, the one area in which the otherwise unassimilable auslanders come to resemble their less than cordial hosts. Many current leaders of the refractory Islamic immigrant communities of present-day Europe openly call for adopting such an 'out-breed-them-and-take-over' strategy. Perhaps they will succeed. Or perhaps, their own reproductive energies also sapped by time and increasingly limited resources, they too will simply join their disappearing white countrymen on the march to voluntary extinction.
I believe one of the two or three central foreign policy challenges for the U.S. in the next century or so is what to do about the gradual disappearance of traditional Europe - and we could throw in Japan as well - as a consequential political, cultural, demographic and economic entity. Alas, I see no sign that even Republicans appreciate the necessity of this. From the Democrats I expect nothing but denial on this front. Far too many of them have raised modern Western European welfare statism to the level of a Platonic ideal in their minds and will brook no talk of its essentially transient and unsustainable nature. The Obama administration is pardigmatic of this blinkered mindset.
All this whining about the alleged free riding of Europe seems very funny to me. If Europe is insignificant and in decline, than why care about it anyway? Maybe this paper should be renamed in thepacific.
The geopolitical reality is that Europe is the lever that America needs to exert influence in Eurasia. Without Europe America would be isolated in the world and it would be poorer. Europe is a major buyer, not of US debt, but of high quality US goods of all kinds. Waging war in Euroasia would also be much more complicated and expensive without military bases in Europe. Germany is a major part of the logistics of the Iraq war altough chancellor Schroeder opposed the war. America and Europe are tied together, because they share the same values. This link does not exist with China, Russia or India.
Somehow, the folks discuss defense instead of economics here...
The fundamental difference between the US and the continental Europe is that the latter produces lots of tangible goods and services, and very little virtual ones. There is one small bakery in Germany per maybe 1000 people, every morning producing delicious fresh Broetchen and Bretzeln and ... I'd rather stop daydreaming, since I'm not there. There's French wine, and Swiss cheese, and Belgian chocolate, and Italian smoked ham. On the industrial side, there are BMW cars, and practical and reliable heating systems from Siemens, and pharma products from Bayer, and so on.
The point is, they produce mostly stuff of clear and immediate utility. They were not selling hot air, there is much less of a bubble in the "old Europe" economies. BTW, they were ways less exposed to the dot-com crash either, and for the same reason. These economies have always been much more prudent and fiscally responsible (often stifling innovation, but this is to US advantage).
Now, somehow the article talks of the US taxpayer sympathy to Europe. But who should be sympathetic? The financial bubble on the verge of fraud has grown primarily in the US and the UK. Basically, the US economy has taken lots of risk and did not deliver. There are too few American products an average person would like to consume. Instead of admitting the (temporary) failure, the posting essentially suggest sending Europe a backdated invoice for the services never ordered (and in most part never delivered). Pathetic!
Wow so much invective, I love being told that I'm a memeber of a decadent, dying and free-loading society. Wow kinda depressing really...
But hold on a minute, how many people here can hold their hand a say "I've gone to these societies and seen their patheticness in all its glory"?
About the whole free-loading thing, by many standards given here, you guys owe China big time (as do we to lesser degree). So there, you know, consistently low inflation, asset bubble money etc etc, you owe China for this stuff by you're standards.
Of course its more complicated the perverse imabalance of saving and spending nations is due to mutual benefit at least in the short and medium term for both sides. Same with the whole "we saved your ass from the Nazis and Russians. Plus your economies too" again mutually benefical. Post-war US policy was very successful at doing those things so that they could deny the Communists the other great industrial hub area, prove the superiority of Captilist democracy and get some good trading partners. See mutual gain.
On the defense question, the free-loading thing could have been argued during the Cold War (even then talking about conventional military resources was useless since Nuclear weapons make convention war useless with regards to advanced economies so US military commitments were mostly for show).
Now even the most crappy European army could fight toe to toe with the Russians. And UK and France have to deploy. And there is probably no convievable senario were Russia will invade anywhere beyond the Polish and Baltic border. The fact that Russia only has gas taps left is a point that has already had been made. But they need to sell that gas.
To be honest all US forces could leave Europe now it would only make pschological difference to geo-politics and a minor one. All that would be needed is the maintenance of the Nuclear umbrella which both sides interests for reasons discussed above.
When I see the scary demographic figures, sometimes I think "gee aren't we going out of way to conserve resources". End comment
matthew,
I lived and worked in several Western European countries for two years about 30 years back, so, yeah, I've been to see the elephant as the saying goes. I share your view that the time - if ever - for the U.S. to have usefully addressed European ingratitude was at least 40 years ago, but that the case was not air-tight even then. America did benefit by keeping Europe non-Soviet; quite probably by more than it ultimately cost to do so - I'll leave that question to the geo-political forensic accountants. In any event, history provides no particular encouragement to anyone expecting gratitude from Europeans for anything at any time, especially now.
I view the roots of the current European situation as essentially genetic in nature and, therefore, not amenable to significant change based upon either American hectoring or American policy. You can yell at a Down Syndrome child for being slow all you like, but you will not make him smarter and may simply give yourself an apoplectic stroke for your trouble.
Put as simply as possible, Europe has spent the last 400 years exporting or slaughtering its best and brightest or doing both at once. For the first three of those four centuries, Europe contrived to drive all of its cleverest peasants and petit bourgeoisie in our direction as the only attractive alternative to a life of limits and insignificance in your ossified, hierarchical, class-based social orders. During the first half of the final of these four centuries, you pumped up the volume by adding ruinous near-universal warfare to the mix. Not content with the damage to the European gene pool done by WWI, you promptly doubled down and launched WWII. By 1945, no major country in Western Europe any longer had a critical mass of male citizens with the balls, brains and brass to continue dominating the world scene. Accordingly, you embarked on a continental-scale siesta.
The fact that contemporary Europeans have elected to take their last thousand years of patrimony and spend it in a final century or so of lazing about sidewalk cafes, watching the dwindling number of attractive women and inventing idiotic philosophy whilst nursing a Pernod - when not basting themselves on foreign beaches during the 13 weeks of annual paid vacation, or whatever it comes to these days - is both unsurprising, and, in my view, almost certainly irreversible. The present day Italy in which most men in their 30's still live at home with their folks and collect government largesse in preference to seeking one of the dwindling number of real jobs available in the pervasive European close-out economy has nothing of consequence left in common with its Roman ancestor save a vague and fading continuity of memory.
So enjoy your endless Spring Break. In 100 years, you will be a corporal's guard. In 200 you will be dust. The only interesting question is whether my descendants or those of some Chinese worthy will get to move into your old room.
Did I hear "We'll bury you"?
Did I hear "We'll bury you"?
Only if you're hard of hearing.
When the late Nicky K. of the late Soviet Union said that about the West as a whole, he was expecting to take an active hand in the killing that he, and everyone else involved, then expected would precede the burying.
In the case of Europe, there need be - barring any attempt by Islamic irreconcilables to actually take the place over before the infidels all die off on their own - no active killing involved, by the U.S. or anybody else. The various European populations have, individually and severally, effectively made the decision to cease to continue existing at a point in the future that is, at most, perhaps 150 years off.
If it softens the blow of squarely facing this, in my view, inevitable reality any, you will not be alone walking into the sunset. The Japanese may well get there before you. In their case we have another population that is, long-term, failing to reproduce itself and which is so ethnocentric and self-referential that no one, in or out of Japan, seriously entertains the possibility that a modified immigration policy can materially change the projectable outcome. Japan is the ultimate blood and soil-based nationality. The blood is failing. In due course, the soil will belong to some other people entirely.
Europe has acquired its current and future case of Islamic indigestion by too long assuming that imported human beings are any kind of solution to long-term societal extinction. Frankly, societies that don't believe in themselves sufficiently to assure continued existence through reproduction are not the sorts of societies liable to engender the sort of enthusiasm for assimilation by immigrants needed for this sort of thing to work. The only societies with track records of successful assimilation of large numbers of polyglot immigrants are those of the U.S., Canada and Australia.
Long before utterly disappearing, of course, the last rump generations of Europeans will spend several decades as part of a population that has dwindled to a point of effective irrelevance in world political and economic affairs. The graphs of functions with asymptotic approaches to zero have long, near-zero tails.
As Mark Steyn says, "The future belongs to those who bother to show up for it." All of Europe has, in effect, decided not to RSVP for The Future. The rest of the world, well-acclimated to the habit of saving a chair for Europe at every significant affair, has not grasped the necessity of beginning long-range planning for the day when that chair goes permanently empty. The rest of the world needs to start figuring out what it intends to do when both Europe and Japan disappear.
I am 57 and come from long-lived stock. I may well see a 90th birthday. If I do, I expect the population of Europe will be smaller than that of the U.S. by that point. My daughter is 20. I expect Europe to have slid into substantial irrelevance well within her lifetime.
I say none of this with any particular satisfaction. But adults must face the facts of the world as they are, not as self-deluding fools and churchyard-whistlers-by wish them to be.
I am struck by your tone and general sense of superiority, not to mention arrogance, that transpires from your post. I have been following this blog for a long time, and I have come to appreciate your efforts to qualify your arguments and to make distinctions, as well as your efforts both to respect and to take seriously your political opponents.
I lived for over 10 years in the States, in DC to be more precise. During those 10 years I have come to know and appreciate many things about America. I have met a lot of remarquable persons and I still consider DC my home, in some sense.
That said, I really don't think you are in any position to give public policy lessons to the Europeans, or to feel smug about them, for that matter. Let me just remind you who is mainly responsible for the mess we are all in. As far as I can tell, some European leaders have been insisting on getting a new system of financial governance in place - and getting the Americans to think harder about this question - before throwing more good money after bad. Can you blame them? Seriously.
As for the welfare state, most European countries have been spending an arm and a leg not just since yesterday, but for the better part of the post WW II era. You could argue that America now could be expected to put in the money it has saved over the last 30 years or so by cutting back welfare programs.
Alternatively, you may consider reducing the health care costs - by far the hightest wordwide and the least effectively spent, as I am sure you know.
Or else you may consider reducing defence spending. Rest assured that nobody in Europe is feeling safer because of your aircraft carriers and subs. Or that people would flood the street in protest if America decided to reduce its defence budget. Really, trust me on this one. (I do think we should getting involved much more actively in Afghanistan. Getting there is just about as easy as reducing the health care spending in the US)
And as far as immigrants are concerned, they actually are getting in droves, let me reassure you. But unlike the J1 visa system on which the US relies for a lot of highly qualified workers, in Europe those workers are not kicked out automatically when their work contract expires.
Labor laws in my opinion are indeed perverse and counterproductive. There has been a fair amount of change in that area, which doesn't mean that Europe will wind up having the same labor laws as the US - which is none, basically.
Ok, enough for now,
Greetings for Europe - FF
Franco,
I'm certainly not empowered to respond for MM here, and I share your chagrin at what also seems to me her uncharacteristically abrasive tone vis-a-vis your co-continentals, especially that bit about paying for your bailout. Failing to drink the Obamian kool-aid of huge and pointless new spending initiatives funded out of invented money strikes me as an uncommon, but still welcome, sign that Europe has not yet entirely abandoned reason as a basis for public policy. MegMac will, no doubt, put in her own two cents worth of response in due course, but, as she's otherwise engaged at the moment, allow me to share a few notes while awaiting her return.
First, arrogance and superiority. We Americans like to say that self-regard is not arrogance "as long as you can back your brag." America has been at least Europe's equal when it comes to scientific and technological innovation for two centuries; for the most recent seven decades of that period, it's leadership in these areas has been pervasive and huge - nearly absolute. The Future is stamped "Made in U.S.A." This is simply beyond serious dispute.
More broadly, we have another saying here - "You can't beat something with nothing." As I believe I have demonstrated adequately in previous comments, modern-day European civilization has a self-imposed expiration date. If Europe were a banana, it would already be showing an alarming number of large brown spots. Quite soon, as civilizational histories are reckoned, Europe will be nothing. To paraphrase a now-classic bit of European culture, "Europe's not pinin'! Europe's passed on! This continent is no more! It has ceased to be! 'Europe's expired and gone to meet its maker! Europe's a stiff! Bereft of life, Europe rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed Europe to the planet it'd be pushing up the daisies! Its metabolic processes are now 'istory! Europe's off the twig! Europe's kicked the bucket, Europe's shuffled off it's mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-CONTINENT!!
With the exception of our own self-loathing, Europhilic leftists, we Americans are, I think, quite rightly skeptical of public policy advice on offer by the obviously suicidal nations of Europe. We prefer our own social order to remain a going concern. Just sayin.'
Then there is the matter of "financial governance." Financial governance is a very European, but not very relevant thing to fasten upon. Europe has had a great deal more "financial governance" than the U.S. for decades, now. And yet all of the bureaucratic micro-managing has not, in the end, insulated you from economic problems, either your own long-standing problems of anemic wealth and job creation or the recent asset valuation crisis you imported from these shores. More government-dictated "financial governance," here alas, is no solution, as it was ham-fisted meddling and extortion by elements of the American government that poisoned the market for mortgage-backed securities by doing the equivalent of insisting that large volumes of wood alcohol be poured into the punch bowl. Europe, as well as America, is now attempting to survive the killer hangover and avoid going blind. The chief culprits in this mess still fail utterly to acknowledge their guilt in this affair and can be reliably counted upon to do things at least as ruinous in future if unwisely allowed to remain in office and if handed additional latitude for exercising their toxic brand of "financial governance."
The cutbacks in U.S. welfare programs are actually only about 13 years old, not 30. They have seen long-term dependency on the government dole drop dramatically without the mass starvation in the streets predicted by many on both sides of the Atlantic. You are not dealing from strength in bringing up welfare.
Or health care. America spends more on health care because we cover essentially all of the costs of doing the necessary research and development. Europe still invents a certain amount of new medicines and therapies, but only because European companies can charge Americans American prices in America and earn American-style profits. If we "go European" in our health care policies, as many in the clueless Obama administration seemingly intend, health care progress will effectively cease. For nations that have already decided to die, no big deal, perhaps. Not my cup of tea, though. Unlike some, I don't particularly begrudge Europe its parasitic ways as I understand them to be a temporary, and dwindling burden. When the last of you dies, no more problem.
Or defense. Our subs and aircraft carriers have, admittedly been a bit less busy these past few years than, say, the U.S. Army, Marines and the Air Force transport and tactical air support folks. Nonetheless, Europe is safer for our exertions in Iraq and Afghanistan. London and Madrid were bad enough, but much worse would certainly have been visited upon every nation of Europe had not the would-be perpetrators of these atrocities-that-never-were been slaughtered in their thousands in the wastes of Al Anbar and the back alleys of Baghdad and Basra. I'll happily entertain a motion to cut defense spending when the last jihadi has been bayoneted and buried.
Again, perhaps our different perspectives derive from our wildly asymmetric priorities with respect to cultural survival. America has the potential to endure indefinitely by following essentially the same path it has been on. Europe, not so much.
Ah, immigration. Yes, the Maghreb and points south are still no small source of European immigration - legal and illegal alike. I don't understand the apparent approval with which you regard this circumstance, however. There is, if anything, less real demand for the services of unlettered tribal barbarians in Europe than there is for illiterate peasant farmers in the U.S. Yet we still manage to acculturate and assimilate a lot of the latter, while Europe has made essentially no progress in doing likewise with the former. The H1 visa program is, comparatively, a drop in the immigration bucket; a bit of corporate welfare for Silicon Valley software firms who prefer latter-day indentured servants to Americans paid at market rates.
As for labor laws, if you imagine America has none, I invite you to return to your former haunts in D.C. and try setting up a business and hiring a staff. Get back to me after that, assuming you can still afford an internet connection and are not doing time for violating one of our innumerable, even though non-existent, labor laws.
The bottom line here is that you and your fellow Europeans are fading fast and you are either in denial or a state of depressive resignation about this fact. Sure, you don't like we brash Yanks much, but you might be a bit less pissy about what we have to do to keep you from personally predeceasing your doomed cultures at an earlier-than-necessary age or succumbing to the homicidal attentions of various bands of Huns we help keep from your walls. I'm not expecting birthday or Christmas cards or anything, but a bit less baseless snark would not go amiss. If I was to make any persoanl effort by way of even slightly moderating the huge imbalance in the current trans-Atlantic unasked-for-advice trade, I suppose it would be to seriously consider adding Prozac to your municipal water supplies if you ever get around to also hooking them up for fluoride. Better teeth and better attitudes.