SINthysist
Rural Racist Homophobe
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2001
- Posts
- 11,940
http://www.denbeste.nu/
(On Screen via long range sensors): Glenn Reynolds has located another interesting article about the growing divide between the US and Europe, by Karl Zinsmeister. In some ways it covers a lot of the same ground as the article by Kagan. However, it's much less sympathetic to the European point of view and far more negative about European prospects than Kagan. So though I've seen many comments to the effect that Kagan's article has been widely read in Europe, Zinsmeister's article is unlikely to get anything like as much exposure there.
Which is a shame, because he also looks at the issues more frankly, with far more attention to economics than Kagan, who concentrates far more heavily on politics. And Zinsmeister makes the point that to a great extent the reason the Europeans hate us is the same as one of the big reasons the Arabs hate us: we're showing them up. We're doing everything ideologically wrong; and yet we seem to keep on winning. But this has taken an ugly turn in the last year, and it's probably going to get worse. He describes the experience of being the only American on a panel discussion in Europe last April about the divide:
To my knowledge I was the only American participating. This was an occasion for Europeans--Germans especially--to talk frankly to other Europeans. The panel on which I spoke was chaired by Reiner Pommerin, a professor at the University of Dresden, colonel in the German air force reserves, and advisor to the German Ministry of Defense. My fellow speakers included Germany's former ambassador to the U.K., the current German ambassador to Poland, a DaimlerChrysler managing director, and a professor from Britain. We were to focus on transatlantic relations.
Throughout the two days, Pommerin set the tone with an aggressively antagonistic attitude toward all things American. "Thank God we had the 11th of September," he declared--for this showed the U.S. how it feels to be humbled. Herr professor-colonel went on to suggest that Americans often feel nostalgic for the "good old days of slavery in the nineteenth century." He told ludicrous stories about seeing empty bottles and litter piled "one meter deep" along roadsides in America, illustrating our environmental slovenliness. He insisted the seemingly mighty U.S. military was now a hollow force, all flash and no substance.
Picking up on this, another panelist stated with authority that most Microsoft products, and indeed most American technologies generally, are junk, and have come to dominate world commerce solely through manipulative trade and advertising. These McProducts will be dashed, he suggested, once Europe gets its high-tech sector (which was sound asleep last I checked) in gear with superior European engineering.
Zinsmeister writes his article with an American audience in mind, which is probably just as well because his first paragraph is, shall we say, less than kind towards Europe. I'm not sure it's fair to judge Europe's cities on the basis of what he saw in Warsaw, for example, and his description of the audience approaches bigotry. Any European reading his article will decide he's an asshole in the first thirty seconds.
But they need to try, because he makes a lot of important points. In particular, he points out that one of the reasons for the widening division between Europe and the US politically is because of a widening economic gap. The per-capita GDP of the US is 60% higher than in even the most prosperous European nations, and the trend is for that to grow in the future. Part of the reason why is American government policy; part of it is cultural. But a lot of it is just that Americans work harder. We work more hours per year; there are more of us working; and on average we produce a third more per hour worked than Europeans do. That is not a gap easily bridged, and right now Europe's policy makers are trying to institute rules which will increase that gap. Zinsmeister says:
We have conventionally thought of Europe as having about the same standard of living as Americans. This is less and less true. For the European Union as a whole, GDP per capita is presently less than two thirds of U.S. levels. America's poorest sub-groups, like African Americans, now have higher average income levels than the typical European.
What's behind this? For one thing, Americans work harder: 72 percent of the U.S. population is at work, compared to only 58 percent in the E.U. American workers also put in more hours. And U.S. workers are more productive--an E.U. worker currently produces 73 cents worth of output in the same period of time a U.S. worker creates a dollar's worth.
Over the long haul, these sorts of disparities add up to crunching economic divergences. Since 1970, America has produced 57 million new jobs. The E.U. nations, with an even bigger population, have produced 5 million (most of them with the government). A startling 40 percent of the unemployed in Europe have been out of work for more than a year, compared to only 6 percent in the U.S.
He continues:
Another telling indicator of economic stagnation in Europe is the fact that many or most immigrants to that continent end up on welfare. In the U.S., almost all immigrants grab entry-level jobs, frequently more than one, and work their way up the economic ladder. The easy availability of work--indeed, our economy's insatiable hunger for additional laborers--is the main force that attracts immigrants to the U.S. in the first place.
That's certainly true about the majority of immigrants to this country, but not about one particular group. It was his comment about Europe's high-tech sector, and his comment about the Nobel prizes, got me to thinking. About those, he says that three quarters of all Nobel laureates in science, medicine, and economics have lived and worked in the U.S. in recent decades. That's an interesting way to state it, because he's dancing around a critical point: a lot of those were immigrants, and most of the immigrants were from Europe.
EOC&P
There's way more...
Interesting reading for Americans. Europeans will get pissed as hell!
(On Screen via long range sensors): Glenn Reynolds has located another interesting article about the growing divide between the US and Europe, by Karl Zinsmeister. In some ways it covers a lot of the same ground as the article by Kagan. However, it's much less sympathetic to the European point of view and far more negative about European prospects than Kagan. So though I've seen many comments to the effect that Kagan's article has been widely read in Europe, Zinsmeister's article is unlikely to get anything like as much exposure there.
Which is a shame, because he also looks at the issues more frankly, with far more attention to economics than Kagan, who concentrates far more heavily on politics. And Zinsmeister makes the point that to a great extent the reason the Europeans hate us is the same as one of the big reasons the Arabs hate us: we're showing them up. We're doing everything ideologically wrong; and yet we seem to keep on winning. But this has taken an ugly turn in the last year, and it's probably going to get worse. He describes the experience of being the only American on a panel discussion in Europe last April about the divide:
To my knowledge I was the only American participating. This was an occasion for Europeans--Germans especially--to talk frankly to other Europeans. The panel on which I spoke was chaired by Reiner Pommerin, a professor at the University of Dresden, colonel in the German air force reserves, and advisor to the German Ministry of Defense. My fellow speakers included Germany's former ambassador to the U.K., the current German ambassador to Poland, a DaimlerChrysler managing director, and a professor from Britain. We were to focus on transatlantic relations.
Throughout the two days, Pommerin set the tone with an aggressively antagonistic attitude toward all things American. "Thank God we had the 11th of September," he declared--for this showed the U.S. how it feels to be humbled. Herr professor-colonel went on to suggest that Americans often feel nostalgic for the "good old days of slavery in the nineteenth century." He told ludicrous stories about seeing empty bottles and litter piled "one meter deep" along roadsides in America, illustrating our environmental slovenliness. He insisted the seemingly mighty U.S. military was now a hollow force, all flash and no substance.
Picking up on this, another panelist stated with authority that most Microsoft products, and indeed most American technologies generally, are junk, and have come to dominate world commerce solely through manipulative trade and advertising. These McProducts will be dashed, he suggested, once Europe gets its high-tech sector (which was sound asleep last I checked) in gear with superior European engineering.
Zinsmeister writes his article with an American audience in mind, which is probably just as well because his first paragraph is, shall we say, less than kind towards Europe. I'm not sure it's fair to judge Europe's cities on the basis of what he saw in Warsaw, for example, and his description of the audience approaches bigotry. Any European reading his article will decide he's an asshole in the first thirty seconds.
But they need to try, because he makes a lot of important points. In particular, he points out that one of the reasons for the widening division between Europe and the US politically is because of a widening economic gap. The per-capita GDP of the US is 60% higher than in even the most prosperous European nations, and the trend is for that to grow in the future. Part of the reason why is American government policy; part of it is cultural. But a lot of it is just that Americans work harder. We work more hours per year; there are more of us working; and on average we produce a third more per hour worked than Europeans do. That is not a gap easily bridged, and right now Europe's policy makers are trying to institute rules which will increase that gap. Zinsmeister says:
We have conventionally thought of Europe as having about the same standard of living as Americans. This is less and less true. For the European Union as a whole, GDP per capita is presently less than two thirds of U.S. levels. America's poorest sub-groups, like African Americans, now have higher average income levels than the typical European.
What's behind this? For one thing, Americans work harder: 72 percent of the U.S. population is at work, compared to only 58 percent in the E.U. American workers also put in more hours. And U.S. workers are more productive--an E.U. worker currently produces 73 cents worth of output in the same period of time a U.S. worker creates a dollar's worth.
Over the long haul, these sorts of disparities add up to crunching economic divergences. Since 1970, America has produced 57 million new jobs. The E.U. nations, with an even bigger population, have produced 5 million (most of them with the government). A startling 40 percent of the unemployed in Europe have been out of work for more than a year, compared to only 6 percent in the U.S.
He continues:
Another telling indicator of economic stagnation in Europe is the fact that many or most immigrants to that continent end up on welfare. In the U.S., almost all immigrants grab entry-level jobs, frequently more than one, and work their way up the economic ladder. The easy availability of work--indeed, our economy's insatiable hunger for additional laborers--is the main force that attracts immigrants to the U.S. in the first place.
That's certainly true about the majority of immigrants to this country, but not about one particular group. It was his comment about Europe's high-tech sector, and his comment about the Nobel prizes, got me to thinking. About those, he says that three quarters of all Nobel laureates in science, medicine, and economics have lived and worked in the U.S. in recent decades. That's an interesting way to state it, because he's dancing around a critical point: a lot of those were immigrants, and most of the immigrants were from Europe.
EOC&P
There's way more...
Interesting reading for Americans. Europeans will get pissed as hell!
