American Interest on Europe

On Europe:

The American Interest has an article on Europe which begins:

Of late most predictions, especially those coming out of Europe, have been on the dour and pessimistic side. So it is refreshing to come across a book like Steven Hill’s Europe’s Promise, which reaffirms the earlier optimistic take: The European model is not only superior to the American in almost every possible way, but also, as its subtitle proclaims, the world’s “best hope in an insecure age.” According to Hill, Europe’s vastly superior stores of smart power will even allow it to solve the problem of the Iranian bomb.

Optimism can be refreshing, however, even when it is neither correct nor justified.

It's a pretty snide piece after that. That isn't to say that the piece is not balanced; it has lots of snide things to say about America, too.

In this he is joined by Mark Steyn, who points out that we are accepting one of the things that undid Europe -- mass immigration -- at the same time that our, ah, "leadership" is interested in installing the other -- massive new social welfare programs -- at the same time that our existing entitlements are about to balloon out of control. Immigration was touted as the solution in Europe, once:

Almost every claim made for the benefits of mass immigration is false. Europeans were told that they needed immigrants to help prop up their otherwise unaffordable social entitlements: In reality, Turks in Germany have three times the rate of welfare dependency as ethnic Germans, and their average retirement age is 50. Two-thirds of French imams are on the dole.

But wait: What about the broader economic benefits? The World Bank calculated that if rich countries increased their workforce by a mere 3 percent through admitting an extra 14 million people from developing countries, it would benefit the populations of those rich countries by $139 billion. Wow!

As Christopher Caldwell points out in his book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, “The aggregate gross domestic product of the advanced economies for the year 2008 is estimated by the International Monetary Fund at close to $40 trillion.” So an extra $139 billion works out to a spectacular 0.35 percent. Caldwell compares the World Bank argument to Austin Powers’s nemesis, Dr. Evil, holding the world hostage for one million dollars! “Sacrificing 0.0035 of your economy would be a pittance to pay for starting to get your country back.” A dependence on mass immigration is not a gold-mine or an opportunity to flaunt your multicultural bona fides, but a structural weakness, and should be addressed as such.

Most Greeks and Turks are good folks. Their culture was never worse than Germany's culture; it was just different. The Germans had an equilibrium of savings and hard work that allowed for a certain level of social programs, especially since their national defense was being outsourced to the US Army. The Greeks had a different culture, but accepted a lower standard of living. With the coming of the EU to Greece, these cultures were suddenly blended; the Greeks were able to spend like Germans without having to adopt the German culture.

Now we see the results; but it isn't that Greece is morally flawed. Everyone is morally flawed. That is what it means to be human. The difference is that the equilibriums of these two cultures were both ruined by the sudden mixing of the cultures. The Greeks weren't getting any better, but they weren't getting any worse. Before easy credit was put in front of them, apparently for free, they accepted a lower standard of living in return for their culture of relative ease. The Germans worked harder but saved and spent more, even if they weren't really being honest with themselves about how much of their freedom to engage in social spending was being financed by the US military and taxpayer.

Then came the EU, and the sudden change in rules was not accompanied by a sudden change in behavior. The law can be changed overnight. People change slowly. This fact was somehow not written into anyone's plan.

Why were investors so complacent? The answer was that almost everyone believed that historical precedents were irrelevant. Greece was now part of Europe, and even more important, since 2001 part of the eurozone—sharing a currency with its more affluent neighbors. And that changed everything. Except that it didn’t.

Armed Liberal at Winds of Change tells a joke that's on point.