Jackson Free Press

A provocative piece by Tony Judt in the New York Review of Books right now.

To American commentators Europe is "stagnant." Its workers, employers, and regulations lack the flexibility and adaptability of their US counterparts. The costs of European social welfare payments and public services are "unsustainable." Europe's aging and "cosseted" populations are underproductive and self-satisfied. In a globalized world, the "European social model" is a doomed mirage. This conclusion is typically drawn even by "liberal" American observers, who differ from conservative (and neoconservative) critics only in deriving no pleasure from it. To a growing number of Europeans, however, it is America that is in trouble and the "American way of life" that cannot be sustained.

The American pursuit of wealth, size, and abundance —as material surrogates for happiness —is aesthetically unpleasing and ecologically catastrophic. The American economy is built on sand (or, more precisely, other people's money). For many Americans the promise of a better future is a fading hope. Contemporary mass culture in the US is squalid and meretricious. No wonder so many Americans turn to the church for solace.

These perceptions constitute the real Atlantic gap and they suggest that something has changed. In past decades it was conventionally assumed—whether with satisfaction or regret—that Eu-rope and America were converging upon a single "Western" model of late capitalism, with the US as usual leading the way. The logic of scale and market, of efficiency and profit, would ineluctably trump local variations and inherited cultural constraints. Americanization (or globalization—the two treated as synonymous) was inevitable. The best—indeed the only—hope for local products and practices was that they would be swept up into the global vortex and repackaged as "international" commodities for universal consumption. Thus an archetypically Italian product—caffè espresso—would travel to the US, where it would metamorphose from an elite preference into a popular commodity, and then be repackaged and sold back to Europeans by an American chain store.

But something has gone wrong with this story. It is not just that Starbucks ha encountered unexpected foreign resistance to double-decaf-mocha-skim-latte-with-cinnamon (except, revealingly, in the United Kingdom), or that politicall motivated Europeans are abjuring high-profile American commodities. It i becoming clear that America and Europe are not way stations on a historica production line, such that Europeans must expect to inherit or replicate th American experience after an appropriate time lag. They are actually quite distinc places, very possibly moving in divergent directions. There are even those—including the authors of two of the books under review—for whom it is not Europ but rather the United States that is trapped in the past.

America's cultural peculiarities (as seen from Europe) are well documented: the nation's marked religiosity, its selective prurience,[1] its affection for guns and prisons (the EU has 87 prisoners per 100,000 people; America has 685), and its embrace of the death penalty. As T.R. Reid puts it in The United States of Europe, "Yes, Americans put up huge billboards reading 'Love Thy Neighbor,' but they murder and rape their neighbors at rates that would shock any European nation." But it is the curiosities of America's economy, and its social costs, that are now attracting attention.

Previous Comments

ID

86638

Comment

more from that article: The US is an excellent place to be rich. Back in 1980 the average American chief executive earned forty times the average manufacturing employee. For the top tier of American CEOs, the ratio is now 475:1 and would be vastly greater if assets, not income, were taken into account. By way of comparison, the ratio in Britain is 24:1, in France 15:1, in Sweden 13:1.[2] A privileged minority has access to the best medical treatment in the world. But 45 million Americans have no health insurance at all (of the world's developed countries only the US and South Africa offer no universal medical coverage). According to the World Health Organization the United States is number one in health spending per capitaóand thirty-seventh in the quality of its service. The rich are getting richer - and have better access to healthcare, too. Did everyone hear the news the other day that 1/2 of bankruptcies in the US are people who've had major medical problems?

Author

kate

Date

2005-02-03T14:16:20-06:00

ID

86639

Comment

A provocative number of facts: In the Euro area, the standardised unemployment rate remained at 8.8% in November 2003, 0.2 percentage point higher than a year earlier. For the United States, the standardised unemployment rate was 5.9% in November 2003, 0.1 percentage point lower than the previous month but the same rate as a year earlier. Over the twelve months to November 2003, the standardised unemployment rate rose in France from 9.0% to 9.5% and in Germany from 8.9% to 9.3%. In Canada, the standardised unemployment rate was 7.5% in November 2003, the same rate as a year earlier. source:OECD Standardised Unemployment Rates (SURs) - January 2004

Author

jlp

Date

2005-02-03T14:56:10-06:00

ID

86640

Comment

I am no expert in this arena, but one question pops up when you quote that, Justin/jlp. How do U.S. and European unemployment rates compare? What I'm really asking, clumsily, is how unemployment in Europe compares to the U.S. I know the health care issue would affect the answer, being that you wouldn't lose your health-care coverage when you lose your job. What else would? What would be the real differences between quality of life and other indicators? Also, how is the E.U. dealing with unemployment these days? I know these have been big issues in recent elections in those parts. I need to e-mail my German Financial Times journalist friend to get in on this one.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2005-02-03T15:45:13-06:00

ID

86641

Comment

unemployed, sure. But with continued access to healthcare, at least it doesn't lead to bankruptcy. Also, does the EU measuring stick for unemployment match the US? I've always wondered that. Also, doesn't alleviate my annoyance with the 475:1 ratio of CEO pay to line worker pay in the U.S. And, the article has some good points about creation of small/medium sized businesses in Europe. And education levels.

Author

kate

Date

2005-02-03T15:46:30-06:00

ID

86642

Comment

Kate, sounds like we made the same point, and asked the same questions, at the same time. Great minds ponder the same B.S. ;-)

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2005-02-03T15:50:43-06:00

ID

86643

Comment

Another must read article on this subject... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6857387/site/newsweek/

Author

kp

Date

2005-02-03T17:34:47-06:00

ID

86644

Comment

Have you noticed that just as the remaining US ridicules the South, Europe ridicules the US? How much resistance to new ideas is caused by ridicule from the "better"? You see it even today with the Red-Blue America squabbles. You see it with the US and Europe. Ridicule is the surest way to close opponents minds - even worse, ridicule is a pretty fertile ground for a demagogue, especially if the ridiculer is the target. I remeber this vividly in the David Duke campaign. Yes, he spoke in blatant coded language. What he did NOT speak in coded language about was anti-liberalism. His anti-liberal demagoguery foreshadowed Rush Limbaugh (who, in turn, appealed to feelings of condesension by the "liberal elites"). Until people stop ridiculing each other over ideology, and especially over superficial matters like "the food", "the weather", "the accents", "the lack of beauty in a place", etc. even the best efforts to change our world for the better will yield limited results - because, as I said, ridicule closes minds and (in the worst case) to outright wars.

Author

Philip

Date

2005-02-03T17:52:54-06:00

ID

86645

Comment

BTW, my point was not to say anything for or against Europe. My point is that better ideas from whatever country will get limited reception in other countries (whether its US ---> World or World ----> US) if we the human race continue to act like spoiled 14-year-old know-it-alls

Author

Philip

Date

2005-02-03T18:09:43-06:00

ID

86646

Comment

On unemployment in Europe: It's my understanding that this is just a conservative talking point to deride European social welfare systems, as they don't have the part time, benefitless jobs we do (well, most of them are actually busily creating an immigrant underclass right now, but up to several years ago this was true and is still true for the majority i think), so if you compare underemployment in the US & the more clear unemployment in Europe, you get a basically comparable picture if I remember the reports. On healthcare in Europe: Conservatives always say it doesn't work well. The simplest rebuttal is: it works better than our system for less money! My favorite though is: well if we're so great, we can't we make it work better than them (and we certainly could since we have more money to design and run it better and train more doctors so less waits). I heard two southern republican doctors talking once, and one was like "you know, i'd love to be a state employee with a good salary and benefits, if only because then the state would be responsible for all the lawsuits." Now, that's tort reform we can all sink our teeth into.

Author

jason

Date

2005-02-04T08:09:22-06:00

ID

86647

Comment

Philip, I was pondering a point tangential to yours this morning. It's funny to notice that we all immediately got into a discussion of us vs them, better vs worse. Instead of taking the opportunity to step outside of ourselves and use other perspectives as a way of learning about ourselves and our country. I work with alot of Europeans, and love to travel over there, and have always enjoyed the whole European ambiance (which varies strongly from country to country - amazing when you consider how geographically small it is). However, it ain't all perfect (much as I love their maternity & family leave programs, their vacation plans, the healthcare, etc). I do know that once you're over a certain tax bracket, France can be an onerous place to live - one good friend is looking to move because of it. so, I'm not here saying "europe's better" - just that they do some things really well, and maybe we should think about those things. Also, is there a direct/causal link between the social programs and the high unemployment? It's gotta be complex, because the article cited above talks about rate of entrepreneurship in Europe, and about how their levels of productivity are generally higher than in the US. In my experience, Southerners have lots more in common with the average French person than we have with the average New Yorker, or Californian, at least in attitudes towards life, family, food, etc. A great book for understanding the French mind is "French or Foe," which was written to help Americans who have to work in France understand how to deal with them.

Author

kate

Date

2005-02-04T08:45:09-06:00