OpinionJournal - Editorial: The European Disease

The subtitle on this June 3, 2005, editorial is "Economic anxiety is a product of the welfare state." An excerpt from the middle:

The Europeans have created a vast constellation of domestic policy interventions that are cloaked in the seductive rhetoric of compassion, fairness and cultural sophistication. These policies include highly generous welfare benefits for the unemployed; state ownership and subsidy of key industries (such as Airbus); rules that make it difficult to hire and fire workers; prohibitions against closing down plants; heavy protections of labor unions against competitive forces; mandatory worker benefit packages that include health insurance, child care allowances, paid parental leave, four to six weeks of vacation; shortened work weeks; and, alas, high taxes on business and labor to pay for these lavish benefits.

In sum, European nations penalize work and subsidize non-work, and, no surprise, they have gotten a lot of the latter and far too little of the former. By contrast, the U.S. model--allegedly cruel and "laissez-faire"--has done much better both by economic growth and worker opportunity.

The frustrating irony is that, at the very moment in history when Europe's model is in disrepute, many U.S. politicians still want to emulate it...

And that's not just the politicians and career 'civil servants' in Washington, D.C., I might add. State, county, and city officials all like to get in on the act, too, unfortunately. (Sigh.)

Oh, for perspective, another excerpt from the same editorial:

The French unemployment rate has hovered around 10% for nearly a decade, and almost half of the jobless have been out of work for at least a year. If the U.S had an unemployment rate as high as France, there would be about six million more non-working Americans--the equivalent of placing every worker in Michigan on the jobless rolls.

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